Greetings,
My name is Tim, and I currently hail from NW Missouri. (My father and I were both career military, so I've spent six years in Germany, two in Thailand, and eight months each in Beirut and Iraq). I fell in love with plants in Europe, with the formal palace gardens found everywhere. I am highly educated with one Associate degree, three Bachelors (with a minor in Botany), and one Masters degree. Majors include Electronics/Computer Technology, Technology, Biochemistry, and Theology. I am currently a candidate for a doctorate in Theology.
I suffer from some serious physical disabilities along with both PTSD and TBI, and I find that working with plants is soothing. At the moment, I have many seedlings, nursery stock, and pre-bonsai online purchases, perhaps 50 trees in all. None of them are considered to be bonsai. Nearly all of them are being grown for trunk development. The trees include cherry, Dwarf Tophat blueberry, olive, azalea, Chinese elm, lilac, wisteria, blue spruce, Norway spruce, orange, Chinese chestnut, and several volunteer walnuts. (I don't know about how the walnuts will turn out; they are experiments).
I enjoy learning, and experimenting with plants. My outdoor gardens are populated with hundreds of plants and trees. I don't spend a lot of money on my hobby, depending mostly on seedlings, cuttings, volunteer stock, and cheap nursery stock with potential. Because I don't spend much money, I don't get upset with my losses (which are rare, and all grown from seed), as long as I learned something beneficial from the experiment.
I am patient, never in a big hurry to prune drastically, wire, repot, etc. I prefer to wait and try to see the potential benefits of acting before I do act, sometimes waiting many months before deciding how to best develop each tree or bush.
