Mistakes were made….

I’m not sure anyone reads this any more with social media’s shift to short form content but if nothing else, i do find it a good way to record my trees progress over time.

Today’s post is one such update showing the progression of THIS TREE and also to provide a bit of a cautionary tale.

The tree was last worked in 2024 and had only since been de-wired and been let to grow. It had put on a good amount of growth and was ready for another structural wiring. So into the workshop it came.

The tree was thinned and i began to look a bit more critically at the dead wood. I refined some of the jins and removed some sections that seemed to go against the flow. I also refined the live veins a little removing sections of bark that had either died back and or were unnecessary.

I gave the tree a quick structural wiring, positioning main branch lines but mostly not wiring thinner shoots like i may on a more refined tree. All in all i am pretty happy with how it is turning out, from what was a juniper liberated from a local school, fully grafted to change the foliage and now taking form to what the finished tree will look like has been a satisfying ride.

As for the cautionary tale, not all the work went without a hitch…….

For those with keen eyes you may have noticed for brown foliage on the sacrifice branch on the apex……

There is more dieback on the rear of the tree…….

After working deadwood i often use a blow torch to remove stringy or fuzzy fibers, it also seems to age the wood and create a much nicer surface texture. I used this technique on this tree too. I had wrapped the foliage in an old towel to protect it from the heat which it did well. As i was burning the dead wood i took a break and walked out of the shed to get a longer view of the tree and the work. I had left the towel in place and as i was focusing on the deadwood’s flow and had not yet styled the foliage. As i was thinking about it and staring from a distance the towel spontaneously combusted and went up in flames!!! ……cooking some foliage in the process. There must have been a small area smouldering when i stopped that i hadn’t seen……. lesson learned. I really should have dampened the towel and probably kept a more careful eye on it.

The worst effected branch is the back branch but there are still live buds and shoots on it. So while it has lost a fair amount of foliage, it should be replaceable with time.

While this tree still has a long way to go, it is satisfying going back through my posts to see how far it has come.