Well, it seems like I should have updated this tree in the summer (from the post green island ficus cascade bonsai) but the poor tree has had a setback.

Read on and you’ll learn what.

Here is how we left the poor thing:





And here it is today:



Now, you see, uh…what had happened was…..termites.

Not in the tree.

But in the wood of the bench the tree was sitting on.

Which caused a small crash.

I live in Florida and, being a semi tropical, rain-every-day-in-the-summer kind of place, any kind of wood just doesn’t last.

Mold, sun, algae, bugs, water, children, animals….you name it, are all the enemies of wood.

The bench just fell over one day.

The bench only lasted about a year.

Not long at all, really.

The mistake I made was building it out of untreated wood.

A word of advice:

If you are making anything that is for the outdoors in Florida, use treated wood.

Or treat it yourself.

You know what?

Just build your benches the way my friend Paul does (OrlandoBonsaiTV-building bonsai benches) you’ll be much better off.

What kind of damage did my cascade bonsai suffer when it fell?



The pic above is the apex.

Below is the left branch.



There wasn’t much ramification:



But there were some new branches that grew which are extremely helpful:



And considering there wasn’t much growth, of course the wire didn’t cut in,



but, the sun did bleach the bark around the wire-



Either that or the anodized color leached onto it.

On the apex the wire did cut in a little:



Considering that and the broken limb….

Snip!



Some more pruning-





Another crack-



Prune it for movement.



This is the cracked branch I had showed earlier but now, without wire we see how bad break is:



That break will never heal. But I need a branch there.

If I cut it short, chances are I’ll get it to bud back either on the branch or at the base of the branch-



To finish, I’ll rewire and fertilize it.







I really think the broken apex was a little bit of serendipitous good fortune.

This was the tree at the end of the original post



And today:



I made a little progress, but not much.

I have since rebuilt the bench with pressure treated lumber so I’m hoping for no more calamities. Maybe next summer we’ll see this tree in a bonsai pot.

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