Bonsai - Ivy

In some bonsai book, I saw a photograph of a bonsai ivy. I wouldn't ordinarily think of an ivy being a candidate for bonsai but the the picture was intriguing. The 'trunk' of the plant was maybe a half an inch thick, and it looked like a long established ivy you might see growing up a wall.

We had an ivy in the kitchen which was there because we've got an ivy-themed kitchen. But the plant wasn't doing well. I moved it upstairs to my bonsai window and it thrived. So much so, I took some clippings which readily rooted in water. Here was the raw material for a bonsai. I planted the cuttings in February 2007. It did well but then the winter of 2007 struck. It was dry in the house and I wasn't paying as much attention to the plants as I should have. Here is what it looked like by March of 2008. Pretty sad. To give you a sense of scale, the pot is about 2 inches high. But in the world of bonsai, as in real life, rebirth is possible. I decided to trim off the dead leaves, give it some fertilizer, and see what happened. By July, it looked like this. It's a happy plant now.