The Hand of Zen

I trimmed this, and wanted to make a before and after gif of this one.  I was telling Sarah, that I didn't have a vision for this tree, but I knew I needed to prune it.  It's been one of my older trees as well, and I've just been letting the trunks thicken up a bit.  I started pruning it, not really knowing where I was going, but I tried to pick the biggest accents and get rid of the rest.  It was really funny because I had worked on it for a while and wasn't really digging it.  I needed something to drink, so I walked into the kitchen for a minute, and when I came back across the room, I looked at it.  It was finished.  I saw I needed to wire a few branches upwards, but I thought, wow.  What a funny thing.  Sometimes you just need to step away for a bit.  One day I'll post the progression of this one.  It has undergone some serious changes.  I even believe this is a cutting from another plant.

Bougainvillea Over Time

Spring flowering is in session!  New shoots and buds on all my trees and plants.  Still nothing from the fuscia, but I have a feeling it will be soon.  It's funny how some years my plants flower beautifully, and some years are total duds.  It is interesting seeing the difference over time.

Last year my bogenvelia looked amazing, and right now it looks deathly.  I've had it for almost 4 years now, which is pretty amazing.  It's gone through some pretty drastic differences, and was my first plant that I actually trimmed, and styled .  For example, It was 4 feet high at one point and I chopped it down to half a foot.  I really like where it's at right now, but I need to work on getting the flowering in specific spots on the tree.

Fast forward a few weeks. (this post has been sitting as a draft for a few weeks) A bird landed on one of the main branches the other day, and broke it off from the main trunk.  At first I was pretty angry, I had this tree as I wanted it, I liked where it was going, and all my work and time was now ruined.  But I managed to save it.  It will never be the same, but I also think that it helped me realize you can always improve the design.  Here's to not settling on a design, but continually improving.

And since this was quite the lesson for me, I decided to scour my old hard drives and post a few pictures over the years...

2/2012 - In Vegas, it was having a hard time outside, so it became an inside plant. (blury image)

3/2013 - LA was really good to it.  Did a lot of growing that year

8/13 - I think this was my best shot of it.  It went through 5 blooms that year.

3/2014 - damn bird, not looking so good either, first bloom of the season

4/2015 - Current shape.  Decided to go smaller since I lost a lot of the balance