Here are a couple of shots I took late last winter; mostly to show the new stand, but they show the tree in last winters form.
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I took the tree to a workshop in Denver when my teacher, Michael Hagedorn, was visiting. We decided to shorten the tree a bit. (Mach5 had the same suggestion when I first showed the tree here.) We also went through the tree, meticulously trimming out any branches growing in toward the tree, and cutting back many branches to encourage better taper. Any dead twigs were removed as well.
This is the only picture I could find from shortly after the workshop.
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Here's a shot of the tree early this spring next to a nice little Deshojo Japanese maple, originally from Mach5.
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And here is a before and after from one of my defoliation sessions this summer. I didn't go to hard on it as I wasn't sure how much I should do after the heavy spring work.