Howdy Nuts. I was a pretty pathetic middling level fella back when BonsaiTalk was a thing, it was great when BonsaiNut came about. I had a lot of bullshit and a few trees that might've been something nice some day and posted quite a bit. I got whack-fucked in the head at work and had some seizures and couldn't drive for a while and left my trees in the care of an automatic watering system over a couple months and my system fritzed out. Everything died over the next couple years except for one stupid Juniperus Virginiana that is throwing out mature foliage just to be an asshole, I can't imagine how far it's roots have gone down now. The few trees still viable were weak as hell and I put them in the ground and they're landscape items now, way too big to dig. I'm not being a wimp about it either, my Amur maple seedling is 30 feet tall and my Carolina hornbeam from Brent is a 6 clump 1' wide beauty by the driveway.
Coming back home to a couple grand and years worth of work gone to dust was needless to say pretty demotivating. I piled up a couple pickup loads of trees to take to a burn pit and every single tree was a knife in the gut.
I piled all my bonsai shit in the corner of my shed and forgot about it. I made a few custom knives (well before Forged in Fire, not that much a fanboy) and I sucked at it. I made my own leather sheaths with those knives though and got some interest. I've been making high end leather sheaths for custom knives since then, I'm better at leather work than I am at forging and heat treating steel. I've been motoring along at leatherwork for a couple years and I really thought bonsai was a fond memory in my rearview mirror.
On March 24th a very close friend of mine shot himself. It had nothing to do with anything I'm doing but for some reason it's made me want to do something gentler. He was a good man with innumerable good paths to walk and for whatever reason I want to get back to something kind. For some stupid ass reason torturing plants into doing what the hell I want them to do seems the right way to go.
I would like to postit one thing for the elm growers and collectors in the US.
Has anyone else found that collecting and/or repotting Siberian elms before they've broken buds is absolutely terrible? I collected 3 Siberian elms last year and repotted them this spring while buds were swelling. That was three weeks ago and they haven't pushed a single bud. Their root mass seemed amazing. I've collected 10 or so this year (2018) from my father's pasture and I'm not gonna mess around with them, we'll see what happens. 6 of the Siberien elms I've collected were already opening buds and without fail they are adjusting better to being collected than other bareroot material.
Coming back home to a couple grand and years worth of work gone to dust was needless to say pretty demotivating. I piled up a couple pickup loads of trees to take to a burn pit and every single tree was a knife in the gut.
I piled all my bonsai shit in the corner of my shed and forgot about it. I made a few custom knives (well before Forged in Fire, not that much a fanboy) and I sucked at it. I made my own leather sheaths with those knives though and got some interest. I've been making high end leather sheaths for custom knives since then, I'm better at leather work than I am at forging and heat treating steel. I've been motoring along at leatherwork for a couple years and I really thought bonsai was a fond memory in my rearview mirror.
On March 24th a very close friend of mine shot himself. It had nothing to do with anything I'm doing but for some reason it's made me want to do something gentler. He was a good man with innumerable good paths to walk and for whatever reason I want to get back to something kind. For some stupid ass reason torturing plants into doing what the hell I want them to do seems the right way to go.
I would like to postit one thing for the elm growers and collectors in the US.
Has anyone else found that collecting and/or repotting Siberian elms before they've broken buds is absolutely terrible? I collected 3 Siberian elms last year and repotted them this spring while buds were swelling. That was three weeks ago and they haven't pushed a single bud. Their root mass seemed amazing. I've collected 10 or so this year (2018) from my father's pasture and I'm not gonna mess around with them, we'll see what happens. 6 of the Siberien elms I've collected were already opening buds and without fail they are adjusting better to being collected than other bareroot material.
