Little orphan 'nana

One morning as I opened the nursery gate I found this pitiful little Procumbins nana juniper sitting outside my gate with a note that said "I can no longer care for my baby please take care of her for me."

Unfortunately I don't have a picture before starting to clean it up. It was sitting about half way down in the pot, all the foliage underneath was brown and dried. My first thought was to just throw it away. But then I thought about the note that was with it and decided that if someone cared enough to leave it at a bonsai nursery then maybe I should try to save it.

After cleaning out all the dead stuff (actually my right hand man Jorge cleaned it out) I discovered some really interesting features on this pitiful little tree. There were some very cool twists and turns hidden under all that dead foliage.

I decided to take advantage of that and to try to create a tree  that looks like one growing high up on a rocky ledge somewhere.
I started by remove all excess branching and foliage since a tree growing in the conditions I wanted to express wouldn't have an abundance of foliage on it. Some of the branches I converted into jins to further enhance the idea of a tree growing in harsh conditions.

 Having trimmed everything not needed and making a few jins I placed some wire on the branches so that they could be moved into a better position.

The next step was to get it out of the big ugly pot it was in and into something more appropriate. After looking at several different pots I decided that maybe planting it in/on a stone would best suit the image I was trying for.

Here it will rest now for a number of months before doing anything else. The foliage pads need to grow and fill out and the apex needs to be arranged after it grows a bit , but I think it's well on it's way to a new life as a possible windswept looking tree growing on a rocky ledge- which is what I had hoped for to begin with. If nothing else I've given it a new lease on life.
I hope you enjoyed todays post. If so please let me know. You can also let me know if you didn't I welcome all comments . Thanks for reading.