My Bonsais

These are some of my bonsais that I have nurtured over a period of time. You may wonder as to while I am in my fifties, how do I possess trees that are over 100 years or perhaps more than that! The secret is that for last several years I used to go down to remote areas where I would locate old abandoned wells, "wadas"(old huge residential structures), again abandoned, Havelis (palacial structures where joint families used to co exist happily & which would perhaps have more than a hundred rooms) & similar places. I invariably would discover vegetation growing out of the stone buildings. Once in a while people perhaps might have tried to remove such growths thus it used to be already stunted. This is true particularly with the ficus family, which has aerial roots. Some of these trees are also known as Indian Rubber trees. I had many more varieties which I found potted, growing wild in old abandoned gardens. There was a time when I possessed more than 350 bonsais which was a huge collection by any standards. I also conducted classes & taught simple & easy ways of maintaining such trees. Unfortunately many of trees suffered & died when I had to leave those at someone else's place for months at an end since my husband was in a transferable job & we very often could not get accommodation for months where I could have those trees under my care. Now that he is retired & we are living at one place I decided to click some pictures with a friend's help put then on my blog. I am not planning to increase my collection. With advancing age its not possible. I can't even claim that these are very properly shaped since as I mentioned they did get damaged during transportation also. Beautiful, shapely branches broke off & similar other calamities occurred.