Thursday, October 20

Pretty Close To the Penultimate Hurrah


The sad orphan close-out sale maple with the bent trunk my wife bought three years ago, in its autumn glory. It's hard to get a halfway decent pic because it's really a 3-D experience; the thing curves back and the leaves cascade. Despite its abomination of a trunk (it might be a decent bonzai in thirty years) it's the frozen-waterfall star of the deck all season long. I wouldn't have looked at it twice. That's why she's the artist.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous!
Hey, a bent trunk is something owners of Atlas Cedars would give their left eyeballs for.
Besides, Japanese maples are supposed to do weird stuff.
(Looks like a laceleaf, actually. Is it? Those aren't cheap, deformed trunk or no.)

James Briggs Stratton "Doghouse" Riley said...

Uh, possibly. Not my strong suit, and seeing how it was my wife who bought it the tag was no doubt lost almost immediately. I'd describe the leaves as "lacy" or "feathery". I'll try to get a definitive answer. And a better camera.

And yeah, it does lots of weird stuff, takes some foresight in pruning every year to keep it open--and yearly root pruning to keep it alive. I think you can tell it developed some orange this fall, and even a slight amount of yellow, before the red came on. That was a first.

Anonymous said...

So, this is the autumn version of a Charlie Brown tree?

Anonymous said...

IMHO this will NEVER be a bonsai -- too regular, too straight (although there is a bonsai style called 'Formal Upright'),but it can always be a tree to love and be uplifted by.

Next year I'd like to see it pictured from trunk level with a simple contrasting background.

Rich (new to blogging)