So my brother has this 14 year old Chinese Elm. Unfortunately, proper care wasn’t being taken of.

Here is the before picture:

and here is how it looks now:

As you can see, its on the brink of death. I did a scratch test in a few places on the trunk, and it did show some signs of green. I have it currently at our home, and hoping to bring it back to where it was and better. The pot that it was in had no soil left, and was nothing but a dried root ball, and i mean DRY. I decided to soak the roots for a bit until the root ball loosened up, and was able to trim some back. I then stuck it into a bit larger of a training pot, so the roots will have room to thrive, with some new bonsai soil, that I watered well. Let’s keep our fingers crossed.

I know its just a tree, but hey, its very satisfying if this tree can be restored.

This Aloe plant was actually from my Grandmother’s house originally, and I have had it for a bit over 10 years now (something like that). It’s about 20/25 years old I am guessing, and wanted to do something with it. It grows like crazy.

I have some cuttings if anyone wants any.

The end product, for now. I need the tree to recover massively after I shaved off almost all of its roots.I tried to keep the main ones in tact. I ended up tying down the tree to the pot for now to make sure it stays down and doesn’t fall over. The larger piece of wood in the middle I think I will cut eventually, but again, will let the plant recover for a bout a year or so before I do anymore with it.

A few coastal redwood trees that I had purchased and are now in bigger containers. A nice upright look is what I will hope for.

Just a few photos that were taken recently:

Trying to work out a cascading juniper… eventually if the trunk will start moving instead of just the branch.

Junipers

Wish more flowers would come up from the Hyacinths

Pomegranate that was doing fairly well, until our canopy accumulated too much rain water, and fell on top of it and a few other plants.

Chinese elms that didn’t make it unfortunately (was growing from seeds), although I do have 1 that was purchased at a year old, and is coming back.

Adopted a few turtles from a friend, and wanted to build a bigger space for them. I started by getting some cheap cherry colored lumber from Home Depot, that was on sale of course, I am not anticipating this pond having a life that is too length, but good enough for now until I can build my dream backyard. The pond’s is approximately 4′x4′, a tad bigger, and the first cuts are below.

After putting together the initial frame, I laid down a small blanket of gravel and sand which serves as a type of barrier between the wood at the bottom of the pond and the liner, I don’t want any puntures. A few braces were added around the inside as well because I didn’t want any of the metal to really be visible from the outside. In the photo below you can only see the horizontal braces, however, vertical ones were added also.

After some Thompson’s Water Seal was applied, I was lucky enough to get a used liner from my father-in-law, and cut it down to size appropriately. I also added some water and decided to give the turtles a chance to stretch their legs in their new water home.

I put a couple of redwood planks around the rim, and continued cutting away the excess liner. At this point I am also getting ready for the pump/filter, but it is not pictured here unfortunately.

My daughter gets a kick out of it, and is constantly looking for the turtles and wanting to feed them. Below a few Hyacinth were added, that were also given to us from my Father-in-law.

Not the biggest project, but at least something that keeps me away from the computer keys and life of design/development. I have some sketches in my head that I really need to draw out of what I would do with the backyard ultimately.

Update!

A few extra photos my wife had taken:

*note this was previously positioned on my other  personal/professional blog, however, I wanted to post it here too.

Picked up some black pine seeds as I wanted to try and see if I can get a few started, and be able to say I raised a bonsai since birth. Soaked the seeds for about 24 hours, and planted the following day.

I was happy to see that pretty much all 50 seeds had sprouted, and were doing fairly well, until again, it got a bit too hot here in Southern California, and a great deal of them didn’t survive.

Fortunately I do have about 10 that are still alive and well, and are almost 2 inches in height. Hopefully they can get past the winter and start to develop their trunk the following year.

I had picked out this Bougainvillea from a local nursery, and wanted to give it a try as the trunk looked fairly interesting, and the tree was still small. When I had purchased it, it had no flowers, and was slightly on the dying side.

However, after a period of time it  turned out fairly nice for a beginning bonsai, as it is placed in a training pot.

Unfortunately, a few weeks later, I had put the plant inside a small green house, just to get it out of the hard rains we were having here in Southern California (which doesn’t happen often). Someone had closed the door to the green house, and as the sun came out, it got hot, and it torched pretty much everything that was inside.

Doh.