2 weeks in the life of a Scotts pine

Over the last 2 weeks its been an hour or two of fine wiring each evening after work. The main branches have had the one foliage mass split into 3 or 4 smaller sections and these will be refined a lot more into shaped pads as the tree makes more inner buds.

Every branch is wired to the tip, ending in an open loose coil of wire that brings the needles together without squashing them. All the upward growing branches are wired down a bit and just the tips eased up, this has lowered the apex of the tree a few inches, made the whole tree wider and broken the few large needle masses into many smaller branches.

For the first detail wiring I'm pleased with the way it's going and already the weaker buds are growing stronger from where the outer candles were pruned off or shortened. Next year some of the branches will be pruned back to inner growth - this will improve the outline of the right hand side of the tree. 

Working with this tree over the last few weeks I have really come to appreciate how much better than white pines these trees are - similar needle size but makes buds like a black pine....and more importantly it is a native species so a lot less worry with climate, rainfall, winter frosts etc.