Happy New Year!

So I relocated to Port Angeles, WA...
Maybe I'll post some info about the move later, but for now lets get to bonsai!
We attended the Desert Botanical Garden Spring Show in 2014 and I sold off most of my bonsai. Because of the upcoming move I had to get rid of most of my bonsai material I had in Phoenix. It just wouldn't have worked here. Too cold.
Instead I decided to start all over (AGAIN!) with my bonsai. Earlier (about June 2014) I bought some azaleas and mugo pine from Home Depot and I chopped them down to experiment with bonsai. They seem to be doing very well.
Around Mid November, I bought some red Japanese maple seeds from ebay. I recently bought some trident maple seeds and began to stratify them today (1/9/15). The maples are supposed to stratify for at least 90 days. This means I should start to plant out the Japanese maples probably end of next month and the trident maples beginning of April.
Looking back at my last couple of entries, I thought I should mention what happened to the adenium and crabapples. I had some pretty good luck with the adeniums, with some excellent germination. They really loved the Phoenix weather and grew quickly. The adenium seedlings were all sold off at the Desert Botanical Garden Fall show in 2013. They sold for about $5 each. Not too bad for 6 month old seedlings!
I had a few crab apples; maybe about 50. Of those, almost half died in 2013 because it was too hot in Phoenix. When I left Phoenix in 06/12, I brought about 25 crabs with me, and I lost about half during the 3 day move through the desert. I'm now left with 12 crabs. They're tiny, scrawny little things, but with a bit of character. They are deep in their winter sleep now. Once the weather warms up, I'll pot them up and try to get some good growth on them. I'll see about maybe field growing some, just so they get some good girth on them.
Now that I think about it, it's not like I'm starting completely over again from scratch. I do have a couple ficus left as well as my crabs. Plus I do have a few bonsai pots that survived the move. However, from what I can tell, there's not a lot of resources for bonsai out here on the peninsula. No pots, no trees. Oh well, if I can't find what I want, I'll just have to create it myself. Kind of what I was doing before. :)
OH! The moss!!!! Moss is *EVERYWHERE* here! I gathered a bunch off my patio steps a few days ago, some from the alley, more from the side walkway... And Japanese maples are used a LOT as landscape trees here. They seem to grow very well. So yeah, I'll be trying some maples.
That's all for now, more to follow as time permits. But to be honest, I'm a lot busier nowadays than I've ever been. Or at least I *HAVE* been very busy, what with the move, the holidays, kids, etc.