IMAGINE spending your entire life in darkness, wallowing away in the deepest, darkest corner of cold, bitter emptiness only to be chopped and reduced to the earth once every so few years.
In fact, the object I am referring to was reduced to equal level of the earth twice in the last 15 years and, before it's first great reduction had been much larger and taller - the object referenced is a Bougainvillea and, according to the former owners of the property, had been growing in the garden since before they owned the property for 10 years.
Estimates put the tree's age at around 25 to 30 years and since Sunday afternoon, this poor creation had been hiding away in a dark corner of our property for far too long.
An image reflecting the beauty of a flowering Bougainvillea
Now, as rude and disgusting as it may seem to many, I shoveled and shoveled and shoveled until I could safely removed this tree from the earth for the purpose of Urban Yamadori - Yamadori is a bonsai term which basically means 'taken from the mountains (or wild)'.
This terms has changed somewhat over the years and now is mostly relevant as Urban Yamadori as not many people actually remove age-old-bonsai-potential-trees from the wild but, rather their gardens or gardens of neighbors and friends.
This was it's home for a very long time and vines were growing into neighboring trees
I gathered everything I would need, including as brutal as it may seem, an axe. All in all, 25 minutes were spent plotting the careful removal and some 10 minutes were spent on removing various non bougainvillea related neighboring growth before I could start working on removing the vine growth and large thorns the actual plant had grown over the years.
Fast-forward, and we're left with nothing but the hardest growth of the bougainvillea
Now, pre-working on the removal of the bougainvillea, I set on finding a suitable container in which to place the tree once I had removed it from the ground.
A cleaned and washed bucket which had previously contained pool acid was used and a mixture of pebbles, peat moss, akadama soil were used as a base-mix at the bottom of the bucket which I had added drainage holes to using a heated screwdriver.
The peat moss (forgot to mention that I added sphagnum moss as well) will ensure that moisture levels remain consistent in the lower parts of the bucket for when I am not able to water the tree due to strange working hours as of late.
Again, fast-forward and the tree has been removed with almost no tiny feeder roots so, a root growing agent was added to the mix.
As can be seen, the tree had quite a bit of growth hidden beneath the ground itself, with visibly large root growth - I suspect a large amount of growth produced by the tree was focused on its roots as opposed to the growth of leafs and branches etc
A bit snug but fits almost perfectly into the make-shift pot where the tree will be allowed to recover for the next two years
The remaining open space in the bucket was filled using a mixture of soils which will aid the tree in its recovery. A large stone was also later added to allow spacing between the two larger branches which have grown quite snug to each other.
With bougainvillea, the potential as bonsai is practically limitless.
Being that the tree I removed from the ground has almost always grown completely in the shade with an extremely limited source of natural feed from water and sunlight, it has never produced any flower growth. Hopefully, once fully recovered the tree will one day produce some flowers and I'll actually know for certain what color flower it produces.
At a later stage, the second branch growing upward will be removed for aesthetic purposes
Anyone who would like to offer advice in terms of future styling tips are welcome to do so.
BonusPhoto: A lovely sunrise I managed to capture early last week at around 6am
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