One of my latest interests has been revisiting my interests in horticulture – in particular, with bonsai. The 3 hours I’d dedicated to learning bonsai more formally have been very useful as I clean my outer area overlooking the valley.

I have a few bonsai started, and I had this ficus I had let go wild a few years ago. It was sold as an asian ficus, but that’s about as informative as talking about an American hot dog. I installed a few apps to identify it and – surprise – everyone pretty much wanted me to pay for one identification, and I ain’t subscribing for one identification.

I have come to the conclusion that it’s probably a ficus elastica, also called ‘Robusta’ and better known as a rubber tree. It had grown to about 3 feet tall, air roots hanging everywhere, and I was taking clippings from it now and then so that I could start some bonsai from clippings. One I was concerned about started sprouting new leaves today!

Anyway, I decided to just deal with that massive bit of bush it had become, air roots and all, dropping leaves despondently that I constantly had to clean. It was a tree being a tree, living it’s best life in a pot and desperately trying to climb beyond it.

About a week ago, I trimmed it down to about 1 1/2 feet, shaping it and hoping to start some from the clippings. It’s an interesting tree to work with, but I did not know just how interesting til today.

I had trimmed it down and shaped the branches I left by wire, trimming it’s roots as well and stuck it into a 10 inch diameter pot that is about 4 inches deep. I stuck it where it wouldn’t get too much light after I soaked it in some stuff to help it through the shock I had done to it. I suppose it matters to me that it was done with good intentions, though I’m not sure what the specimen will think of it.

There was this one long branch, low down, that was too big to cut I thought. It was straight and curving below the pot, which might work for some styles, but it would end up being an odd part on the little tree. It bugged me, and was too big for the wire I had, so I went and found some aluminium for a splint, and bent than, tieing it to the branch by wire and using other wires to pull at it in ways I approximated to what I wanted.

It worked to an extent, but it just didn’t seem like it would do anything nice for the tree other than be… irritating to me.

Today, sitting down looking at it and wondering whether I would ever be proud enough of it to show someone else, it dawned on me. That branch, It, like the rest of the tree, was sprouting leaves. I immediately unsplinted the branch, cut the tip off and stuck it in the ground, pulling it and holding it with wire to form an organic angle with the main trunk.

The idea is to make it into a 2nd trunk. I don’t know if it will work, but I do know I can bend the hell out of this tree even as it’s older to shape it. If it works as I hope, it may not become a ‘real’ bonsai based on style, but it will be it’s own beauty, I think. At least to me.

I had done something similar on a Jamaican plumb tree at a house I lived at in San Fernando, where to get the branches to cover a broader area and be easier to trim (while keeping the grass down under it’s foliage), I hung bricks on the broad branches, forcing it to grow across rather than up.

If it looks good in about 6 months, I’ll mention it again here. Yet that one moment where I saw what I might be able to do was a wonderful and rare thing.

Growing, creating things, bending things to our will – but not to support the systems around us that don’t support us…. just for the sheer fun of it. To try something new, to stretch ourselves in new directions by stretching what we know in new directions by hypothesis followed by experiment…

Ahh, I love functional works in a dysfunctional world.