Ceanothus Maritimus

[humboldtmadness]

The weather here lately has been bouncing between lousy to clear and super windy. Today was in that goldilocks zone of just right to get some root work done, nice and clear but no wind and rather cool.
The other day I was looking for project material and found this little guy, I love the clearance section of the nursery I actually got two of them for under $10. Woo!
They were both in 1gal pots and had a bunch of circling roots filling almost the entire container. Well a little while later I had hammered this out. I did my best to clean up the roots and get a little bit of basic shaping done. They had these green flat baskets at the dollar store in a couple sizes so I came home with a few and it worked out great as a training flat for this little fella'.
Hope everyone had a good day and fun with their trees.

 

[Bonsai Nut]

I'll be curious to see how your tree does. Ceanothus grows wild down here, though only in the mountains. Just last weekend when I was mountain biking I saw some stunning specimens - large shrubs covered in purple.

 

[humboldtmadness]

Thanks, I am curious how it will do too. That one was a bit of a gamble. The one you attached a photo of is a beauty, looks like quite the sight while enjoying a bike ride. Hopefully mine will start to look better than it does now soon and maybe bloom more next spring. I have another one set aside in case the work on this one was too drastic. I have worked these before a few years ago and I seem to remember them being tough as nails, but figured having an extra to work on next year was a good backup plan. It has not died back at all since this work was done and popped a couple new buds, don't want to count my chickens before they hatch, but it looks like it will do okay.