It’s been a busy week and looks like it will be also busy this coming week.

On the 18th, 19th and 20th of this month is the Annual AABC convention which this year is being held in my state, Victoria. I have been lucky enough to have been asked to display a couple of trees and also prepare a friends white pine for the show. I spent the last weekend wiring the White Pine and it has come up well and hopefully I can share a post about its transformation some time after the show.

The trees I am preparing are both deciduous (with one conifer as a back up). It’s a strange time of the year to be exhibiting deciduous trees as they have not started to colour yet unlike trees elsewhere in the state (Some trees from good friend up in the foothills) so I am left with a dilemma, do I defoliate and display bare or do i leave the leaves on?

The leaves are in-between colouring for Autumn and the summer’s growth. Some years we get mild Autumn temperatures and the leaves don’t really colour at all and instead just go brown and fall off. This Autumn is also warm so I don’t like my chances of getting any colour before the show.

At the moment I am leaning towards defoliating and displaying them bare but as a last dash effort to force some colour i am keeping the smaller of the two trees in the fridge every night to try to force some colour. If this doesn’t work I think I will defoliate.

Hopefully the winter temperatures of the Kelvenator region will induce some colour.

I havent tried this before but I guess I will see how successful this technique is over the coming week or so. If it isn’t showing colour by next weekend I think it will be defoliated for the show. Let the waiting game begin.