At the beginning of February 2009 the tree was taken to our Artistic Bonsai Circle group meeting where during the course of the day a substantial amount of scissor pruning was carried out on the tree in order to thin out and reduce the density of the foliage pads.
This pruning comprised of cutting back the individual outer foliage florets back to a junction line with a floret behind. This enables the remainder of the shoot to continue to grow.

View of the front of the tree taken during the scissor thinning out process. The cloth was placed over the top of the pot and compost to reduce the amount of debris from falling on the surface of the compost.

View looking down on the bottom right hand branch during the thinning out process. As can be seen the tip of the rock that the tree is planted on is now visible above the pad line.

These two pictures illustrate the amount of foliage thinning out that was undertaken. The picture above was taken at the end of May 2008 and shows just how much the tree has grown and how dense and visually heavy the foliage pads had become.
The picture on the right was taken after the February 2009 thinning out and shows a visually much lighter tree now. This pruning has also opened up the pad density allowing more light into the pad which will promote more future growth.
Due to the very cold weather we have been experiencing together with snow the tree has been placed in a cold greenhouse to protect the newly cut foliage ends from frost damage.