[Sangreaal]

Quote: Originally Posted by dick benbow Marie, must be nice to be able to sit around the pond....outside. It's been raining here for days...everything is soggy...with more to come. Oh well, That's why they call it the evergreen state, cause it's ever raining. I hate going in and sitting by the inside pool as my favorite asagi thinks I have a worm for her and when i don't she pouts. Worked with my satsuki azealas that I use for bonsai. Am training some little starts into a root over rock kind. It involves starting them in long narrow tubes filled with actual soil from japan ( kanuma) so that the only place the roots have to go is straight down. Then each year you begin removing the soil at the root line and twisting the tiny roots together so they grow together and get bigger faster. After about 6 years they are then attached by raffia ( dried grass) to the appropriate rock with deep fissues in it and buried once again in soil so they attach to the rock. Then over the years they are uncovered again for display. This way for the next 10 years when it rains I'll have something to do! LOL...oh my

I don't think I could handle continuous rain like that, Dick. Winter is always like "the waiting room of the world," as C S Lewis coined it, and it sounds like you're still waiting. *S*

I'll have to send your asagi some of the nightcrawlers that live beneath us here. They can get as thick as my thumb and 10-12" long, and it's a hoot watching them being slurped up like the finest of spaghetti. It looks like a game of tag football when one of the littler koi get one of the big worms and runs all around the pond trying to chew it down before the other koi catch up and attempt a swim by snatching of the bait wagging along beside its furtively gobbling mouth. *L*

Wish I had an indoor pond...perhaps one day the experimental one in the video will be greenhoused like I planned to do last year. It's getting some permanent upgrading this year. *nodnod* Like real plumbing and a bonafide certified pond liner after the shelves are dug out. The projects never end with koi kichi, do they? *S*

What an interesting technique to bonsai! I've always wanted to try something like that with the lovely Mimosa trees here. They are very prolific from seed and I always get a gazillion little Mimosa sprouts coming up in the spring, which if I didn't mow them down would be a foot or two tall by the end of the year and I'd have a forest instead of a yard. *L* Would Mimosa make good bonsai? They are so graceful and fragrant....

Marie