The Bonsai to Be

Wee Willow Inspecting Progress

I mentioned in a previous blog that one of my projects for the summer was to turn this evergreen into a bonsai or ornamental shrub. Fire wood had once been stacked against it on the porch and winds and snowdrifts and fallen pieces of firewood had beaten it down and killed branches.

My first task was to uncover it and cut out the dead branches. Then I began opening up the basic structure of the shrub and let the light through. I don't know that this part is complete but I think bonsai are to be done slowly and it is the contemplation of what next to do which brings inner peace.

But being of a decided Western mind set I had to do while considering my little tree. And so I weeded around the plants in the bed beside it all the while studying my path as it were.

This too also did not get done in a single day. This is just half of the bed freed of clogging grass and dandelions. There is a poppy and several Columbine here and the unearthed soaker hose. An as yet unshaped branch of my shrub is in the foreground.

Yesterday was sunny but it had a biting wind so I stayed away from my uncompleted labors and drew some sketches of possible forms for my bonsai to take and also things to do in the flower bed. Beyond this picture is the remnants of another shrub that was killed a couple winters ago after being buried under a five foot fall of snow from the roof. Its roots are going have to be dug out so something can be planted it its place. Wild catnip, tansy and chocolate mint have claimed the spaces around the dead branches as their dominion so it will not be an easy fight.

If the weather is nice today the war to reclaim the flower bed will continue today. And no doubt more shaping will get done on the shrub.

Friday's Foto & Revised To Do Lists

Since getting over the flu I have been rather depressed. It is spring her and time to begin all those outside projects and yet the budget isn't able to handle the deck I would like to be building for the studio, or the cobblestone walk to the door, or a third raised bed for growing things. And it is as if the flu just underlined this for me.

I pulled myself away from the computer yesterday to sit in the sun on my stoop that will just have to do until the economy picks up and art sales return to former levels or beyond. I had a pen and a sketch book and my goal was to make a list of things to be done around the house that did not require money or at least very little of it.

Weed flower beds is at the very top. Not my favorite of tasks frankly but it does get one in the sun, make things look better and require no money. In one of those flower beds is a low evergreen that would lend itself to being trimmed into a Bonsai. Thank you Bekkieann for that idea. And while I got the studio sign painted I need an Open sign. Plenty of scrap lumber around to do that. And maybe I cannot do the cobblestone walk yet but I could level the playing field as it were and get it all prepped.

And there is buff and fluff both dogs. I found the old trimmers to do my standard poodle. Did her all the time till I found Audrey. Well, I cannot afford Audrey right now and Mardi does need trimmed. Somewhere there is a nail clippers too for them.

And last year I began a rock garden around a small pond. I got the liner in place and a pump on a shelf somewhere. I had an ideal but it got abandoned for finishing the tile in the studio. Rocks are everywhere. It is just hauling them and placing them and filling in spaces. I can even dig up wild plants and shrubs to put in the crevices.

Then there is my plant stand idea. Just a minor amount of wood to buy.

The list goes on. Dad always said if you had the time you didn't have the money and vice versa but I do have the time right now if not the money. And now I have a list of projects that don't require money. I think progress on any level can lift our spirits. In these trying times we just need to be more creative.

Note on Photo: the Cholla blossoms above were from last summer. On Chats with Charley I have another view posted. Digital photography is another of those no-cost projects. And the wildflowers are just beginning to bloom around here.