Pick a front.

Eric has been growing this Pomegranite in this big pot to fatten the trunk and nebari.  Now he starts working on setting the main branches.

I missed the real before photo but you can see in the photo on the left that a large root was cut out.  Yes it was an ugly "big toe" that came straight out and then went into the soil.  In the photo on the right you can see how big it was.  A smaller root nub to the right was also removed.  This is the time of year for removing big roots. Work done by John Jackson with some cutting tools and a small wood working chisel.

Gibbie's semi-cascade Elm got trimmed.  Wire is next when he gets home.

Abe contemplating his Ficus.  He will probably remove the Tootsie roll in the front.

Sorry for the delay, but yes we did have a very good work session in August.  We had 12 members present working on their show trees but mostly on bringing other trees along and starting some new ones to keep the pipeline full of progressing trees.

Here is a nifty way to push roots into the soil or at least push them down closer to the soil surface to reduce the visual impact if they are too much in your face.  This issue does distract from the tree.  You see 4 things to accomplish this.  First are the stick(s) used as a stiff object which the pull down wire is attached to.  In this case John used 3-1/8" sticks and used a piece of wire to hold them together.  The wine cork was cut in half length-wise and is used as the soft but firm object which is pressed against the root.  For the hold down wire used to create the downward pressure on the sticks and corks, John used some a piece of insulated solid copper wire.  As is seen in the photo, the wire is run under the pot and wired at each end.  The ends are twisted creating the downward pressure.  this allows the pressure to be increased over time as the root is pressed into the soil.  As the roots harden they will stay lower in the soil.