Warm greetings all. 🙏 💚
I've loved and worked with plants in many different contexts, my entire life, since I was a child. I just say that I'm a plant freak. I'll be sharing much more on the plants with which I work, and their magic. I find so much joy, excitement, fun, and inspiration in my beloved plants. Co-creating beauty with plants.
Today I wanted to share with y'all a few photos of a Chinese/Vietnamese weeping banyan, Ficus benjamina, that I put into a bonsai pot a bit more than a year ago. I found some great lava rocks and various moss species to place on the surface. The mosses have mostly covered the soil and the lava rocks. This tree is one of the many cuttings that I've taken of the massive and impressive Rainbow Falls Banyan, in Hilo.
A few months ago, I had the inspiration to begin training it. The one challenge with that was finding wires that were just the right balance of stiffness and flexibility. While, at the time and with what was available, I could not find one suitable wire for the job, I found that if I used multiple wires, of differing stiffness/flexibility, I could effectively wrap them around the branches without damaging them, as well as hold the branches in their new orientations. I also used one more very flexible wire tied to the bottom of the pot and a lower main branch, to allow more fine-tuned adjustments. A bit of context for why I chose the materials that I did - I live in an off-grid intentional community, way out in the jungles of Lower Puna, on the east coast of the Big Island of Hawai'i, and I do my best to work with available materials before outsourcing.
These shots, that I took less then an hour ago, are of each side of the nascent bonsai, including from above, and a view of the mosses covering the soil and lower trunk.
I very much look forward to seeing how this tree develops over time. I'll post updates Perhaps!
Thank you all for sharing another slice of beauty from my world! 🙏💚🌍