We welcome Kathy Shaner once again to our TTSBE Foster Care Day.  We are very thankful to have her as our curator to see to the health and styling of our TTSBE Trees.

A few months have gone by since we put up our extension for the tropical species and it has been holding up well.

A little bit of adjusting the clamps and we are good to go for another few months until the weather is warm again.

Kathy examining a juniper.

Found some tiny little brown specks that could be spider mites. 

Kathy asked one of our volunteers to spray it really well with water to remove them.

Trimming the Brazilian Rain Tree.

Per Kathy's instruction, our experienced volunteer started trimming a beautiful ficus that was recently donated to TTSBE.  

As all these go on, our dear friend is always there waiting and guarding our bonsai wires.

A few before and after pictures of Kathy showing us how to clean up the branches to facilitate the healing of the tree.

 

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

Sometimes a brown marker can be of great help.  Here she colored and dotted the truck so that the white look of the wound disappeared as you look at it from far away.

After:

Another volunteer wiring the branches of a Cedar Elm.

Nicely done.

A few pieces of bark fell off this tree.  No worries, we can fix that...

There is an area with no bark and a round wound.  No worries, we can fix that too...

Artist at work.

This was the almost finished picture.  I did not take an after picture.  Believe me, it looked a lot better than before.

Here we see a hole on the top of this Cedar Elm and it will trap rainwater and eventually cause rotting of the trunk.

The solution:  Make a drain hole through the truck.

Volunteers took turns holding and stabilizing the tree.

Decided to change pots for the ash juniper, tree # 57E, in our collection.

Took it out from the old pot.

Soak the roots really well.

Reduced root ball and wired it into its new pot.

Fill up with soil and we are good to go.

In its new pot.

An example of what planting angle can do to your perception of the tree.  Below is the current planting angle of Tree #51.

By rotating and slightly tilting the pot, we see the third trunk and thus adds interest to the tree.

Finally, Tree #58E, an Ash Juniper about to get its "hair cut".

A different planting angle was also decided for the next repotting session.

After a whole day of work, all our volunteers felt the same as our dear buddy here!