Oookay
Seems that the jury has spoken. Thank you all for giving the tree a thought. And "Rutledge" is THE Andy Rutledge (which I suspected he was, but didn't dare to hope), whose many articles and the "Artictic foundations of bonsai design" I've just recently read??
I'm into bonsai some 2 months, so now I'm sucking in information like a black hole
, so having a virtual made for my tree by Andy himself is a very humbling and at the same time enormously encouraging experience to me.
And I completely agree with your point bwaynef - if I don't like the branch, I can chop it off later. Actually, I've been to a workshop with Jurgen Zaar like a month ago and he was so confident about hacking off everything not needed that I'm still very chop-happy, which probably I shouldn't be too much of
By the way - related question on spruces. I've read that spruces are back budding veeeery reluctantly, one should not remove the needles from the portion of the trunk where back buds are desired - from your experience - does thathelp? because they'd be quite a nuissance in wiring, and also you cannot apply raffia in that place...