Privet stump... getting smaller

[daudelus]

Here's a privet stump dug about 4 springs ago... it has developed fairly well I think, but I have been negligent with applying wood hardener, so when I brought it up to work on it, there was plenty of soft wood to be removed... I had recently purchased some dental tools on EBay ( $4 for a set of 4!), so at least a positive is that I got to use them!

It stands about 14 inches tall...here are some images of the base that was recently cleaned up down to the hard wood.

And a shot of my new instruments!

 

[my nellie]

... ...but I have been negligent with applying wood hardener, so when I brought it up to work on it, there was plenty of soft wood to be removed... ...

The deadwood looks very nice. What a pity it has to be drastically reduced!

 

[daudelus]

The deadwood looks very nice. What a pity it has to be drastically reduced!

It has had to be reduced over the course of time after the initial rough carving a few years ago... I unfortunately lost all photos of all my trees recently with a computer crash, but here is what it looked like a couple months ago.. so not a drastic amount of soft wood taken (maybe 1/2 inch dug into most of the cavities that were already present) but any is too much for my liking!

 

[daudelus]

Would you say this would be an improvement? It would bring the parts more together and shorten it also...

To eventually get more something like this:

Any thoughts?

 

[daudelus]

I wanted to get as far under the soil line with wood hardener, so I went ahead and repotted it into a mica pot...

 

[my nellie]

Would you say this would be an improvement? It would bring the parts more together and shorten it also... ...Any thoughts?

My eyes see something like this might look better.

Move the branch to the right more downwards and let the other branch be kind of an apex.

 

[daudelus]

That matches up with my rough virtual image I posted... thanks for confirmation on what I had in mind!

 

[my nellie]

Personal opinions, as always