Yesterday was my birthday, and as a special treat, I indulged myself all day long in some of my favorite things... one of which is, of course, bonsai!

The last several months have seen me getting a little lazy with my trees... watering as needed, but not doing much (okay... ANYthing) by way of weeding, trimming etc. Yesterday was a wonderful day of communion with my trees, repotting two, trimming several, weeding, taking pictures, etc. It was exhausting, but fun! [For the record, I have several more trees than you've seen on the site -- but they're more pre-bonsai at this point... and if I'm going to be outside with tools and dirt, I have a bunch of orchids that need my attention too!]

The Desert Rose had something weird happen to her lately... the lower branch kinda withered up and died. Fortunately, there is a bunch of new growth at the base of that branch, but I have no idea what happened -- although there was a windstorm that knocked her over... I guess that could have done it! I trimmed her up and repotted her into a pretty new pot. I forgot to take a picture of her in her new pot, but will remedy that soon.

The leaves on the Dwarf Jade have reduced significantly, which is neat to see! I have a couple other JAde plants that I grew from cuttings, and they haven't reduced nearly as much!

Several of my trees had snails on the soil. I'm not a big fan of creepy crawly things, so I used my bonsai tweezers and removed them. I need to find out more about why they are there and what I can do to keep them away. I'm going to post about this in the forums, so if you have an idea or suggestion... please let me know!

I also repotted the Ficus microcarpa "Kingman" and removed all the fruit -- I read somewhere that the fruit should be removed when you're working on the tree, so I did. It looks pretty good in the new pot, but I think the pot is too big and I'll eventually have to find a smaller one. For a transition pot, it will do.

Close inspection of the trees showed no further unexpected insects, so I'm thinking that the Neem Oil is doing its job.

I took pictures of everything, both before and after, and the pictures are located in the Gallery. I will also try to update the My Trees pages later today.