2 years of a christmas tree

This tree, a Picea orientalis, was a regular christmas tree when I have bought it in a garden center two years ago.



In 2005 I have tried some initial styling by pruning away a lot of the branches and wiring the remaining ones. The overall image is very stiff, it's not much of a sight yet...




Yesterday I have been working on it a little bit. I have pinched back the new shoots, corrected the apex a bit and rewired some of the branches. I have also removed some of the larger branches and shortened most of the remaining ones.I think it's already significantly better, although it still needs many years to have something of a feeling.

As far as it may still be from bonsai, still seeing a tree getting better year after year is the joy of bonsai.

Beech in full leaf

My beech has leafed out, and I'm really fond of it :)


With me for scale...

Ground layer on an older hornbeam

Two weeks ago I went to the clubs (Egyetemi Bonsai Club) "practical" session and worked on two of my trees. One of them was a collected hornbeam which had a strange nebari but otherwise a fine shape. So when I have bought it last year I thought that's a fine specimen for trying out air layering (actually ground layering). This was the second time I was trying this, and since the first time was a week before, there are no results from either yet. We'll see... (But so far the tree has survived the operation). I'll report about the progress, hopefully no sooner than next spring when I check the new roots.
The tree is the one on the right side of the first picture in the ugly green bowl.

Pinus sylvestris yamadori

This is a tree that I have obtained last autumn. It was collected somewhere in the French Alps. This year I have wired and repotted it. This was one of the trees that I have exhibited on the spring exhibition of our club.


This is how it looked like about two weeks ago:




A close-up of the base:




And the way it looked like last autumn.