The top half of the tree had completely died off, which makes me wonder if the tree had served as a Christmass tree at the end of 2016 or 2017 before being neglected. The bottom half however had a huge amount of live branches, with their buds still closed despite already being two and a half months into spring.

I cut off all the dead and weakened branches and shortened the dead portion to a manageable size. I then extended the dead top (a feature called tenjin in Japanese) as a dead canal (shari) down the trunk, as would have happened naturally over the next few decades. When I found it the tree was potted in a sand-like growing medium, which allows no oxygen and is quite detrimental to the health of the tree. I decided to bare-root the tree, and the damage revealed itself in the lack of hair-like feeder roots. I proceeded anyway, by planting it in a deep bonsai pot, at an angle that seemed like it would yield the most interesting front to the tree in future styling.

Within two weeks of repotting into an advantegeous soil mix the buds finally opened and the tree was able to grow a bit for the rest of the 2018 growing season. In 2019, the tree also thrived, so much so that in January 2020 I styled the tree. The branches of firs are extremely flexible and can be bent into any desired position. I ended up bringing most of the branches around to fill out both sides of the tree and to frame the impressive deadwood feature down the front. I changed the angle, and when repotting to a smaller container in March 2020 I will change the planting angle.