I keep thinking this one needs a change. Maybe even a trunk chop. I had put it into a much deeper pot after someone on a popular bonsai forum advised me that the plant had probably become stressed after being repotted every year. It's true the plant had a slow start last spring but I had moved from where I was living in the middle of last winter and left all my deciduous trees with a relative. Right near the end of winter all the trees either dried out enough to kill them or, in the case of this crabapple, all of its developing buds died and fell off. It had a slow start because it wasted most of its energy producing a second batch of buds. Anyway, that's what I believe is the case. I can see the buds developing on it already and there are about three times as many as previous years so I hope some of them are flower buds. I collected this one from the side of a road about six years ago and it has come a long way.
Here is an earlier photo of the same tree. As you can see it has been shortened quite a bit over the years. I wonder what it could look like down the road if I trunk chop to the third or second branch.
