I received an email a couple weeks ago from someone with Feedspot who told me my blog had recently been ranked in the top 75 best bonsai blogs on the internet. Which, as you can imagine, threw me off.

When you look at real professional bonsai blogs, such as AdamAskWhy you can easily understand why he ranked in the top 75. Me? I hardly update. And for that I apologize because I still get quite a bit of traffic here. Here’s a link to the post for those interested:

http://blog.feedspot.com/bonsai_blogs/
So this is kind of a promise to you all, that I’ll stay on top of things and update with more posts and more winter tips when that does finally roll around. But for now, here’s my little badge of honor that serves as a reminder to keep posting here and keep you all updated.

First of all, a very Happy Father’s Day to all those who have the privilege of calling themselves father’s. May your day be full of beer and love.

This is just a quick post about my current collection. I’ve got a few trees, all Ficus of course, and all in different stages of development. Let’s start with this small Ficus obliqua I got from Jerry Meislik a few years ago:

It’s a small tree, but it’s been through quite a bit and keeps on fighting. It went dormant for a few months and lost all leaves. I’m pretty I made a post about this tree a couple posts ago. Here’s how it looked a couple months ago:

I stuck it in a temporary indoor greenhouse and it bounced back.

The next tree is this Ficus virens I bought from Wigerts Bonsai. Check out their website here.

I recently defoliated and repotted this tree, so it’s coming back with nice bright red foliage:

You may be asking yourself “But Ryan, that first branch looks dead?” and you’d be correct. I accidentally stripped the bark from that branch when trying to wire it. Did I tell you all I’m bad at wiring? Cause I’m bad at wiring. For the record, I cut that branch off today just to clear it all up.

The next tree is this shohin Willow Leaf Ficus I got from Jason Schley. You can check out his stuff here. 

It’s a pretty sweet little tree.

Next up is this Ficus microcarpa I bought from a forum friend. Here it is when I first received it:

After letting it settle in, I started work on it a couple of days ago. I repotted it at a new angle, cut away some of the reverse taper that can be seen after the first branch on the left, and I notched the first branch on the right and brought it down. I also shortened the tree because it lacked taper in the upper trunk.

And last but not least, this massive Willow Leaf Ficus I bought from the Meehan’s in Maryland. I haven’t started work on this tree, but when I do it’s gonna be something. This is an older picture, give me a minute.

It’s got a pretty sweet base:

Here’s an updated picture of the canopy, it’s nothing but leaves now. I’ve considered rooting some cuttings and giving them away to some of my blog followers if there’s any interest, but stay tuned on that.

That’s the majority of my trees. I’ve got one small Ficus microcarpa and a ficus natalensis that really haven’t had any work done, but I’ve still got them. I told myself I’m not going to buy any more trees until I’m able to take this raw piece of Willow Leaf Ficus stock and turn it into something decent, but that’s probably not going to happen.
Stay tuned!
Ryan