Morning friends it's John it's been a really long time since I've been on this side of the camera but had lots and lots of changes going on I'm not going to promise a bunch of videos but I did make a promise to make one video and it's for a buddy and we have some history and good history and it's because of YouTube and so this is kind of a celebration of that relationship but anyhow today I'm going to be trying to get this big Craig Mertle into this killer Eli Aiken pot from he runs Waldo Street Pottery he's out of Atlanta and he's really been doing some great stuff with containers and he's not been making it very long but but this stuff is really cool so I'm excited to be a friend to be lies and having the opportunity to use this big container today is a real treat so the Craig Mertle's one that I've been working on for three years now I'll show you the buds are just busting out so it's time to get this work done if I wait any longer it's gonna be too late but I've got a lot of hard work to do today these are in clay, the root balls are still have a lot of clay in them and also some of them this one in particular seems to need some cutting across the base so it's going to be a big challenge today to do what I need to do to get this tree into this container but I think we'll hopefully be successful but anyhow I'm gonna go ahead and get started 18 and Sawballed So I can see this pot somewhere close to 18, 19 inches in diameter and probably four or five inches thick. The glaze is really cool. I have an hard time figuring out where to place the tree. So fortunately around pot, it has some flexibility but I'm looking forward to getting the tree in there and figuring out where it's going to look best to mine. You can see the timing is just about right on this tree. The buds are swollen. They're not really opening yet but it'll just be a dire too. And these buds will be popping. So this tree is a crate mertle that I started working on three growing seasons ago. I purchased these trees as big landscape material and I have been, I chopped them back, put them in these containers three years ago. They still have a lot of clay and stones in the root ball. So most of my tasks today is going to be cleaning up that root ball, getting it down to a place where I can put it in this great container and then trying to see how I'm going to make this base fit in with that great container. So you can see this tree's got a nice base. Alright, I'm going to start by trying to get this big crate mertle out of the pot. It must weigh close to 100 pounds as it is but I'm going to try to get it out of its pot and start working on the roots and I'm going to have to do a bunch of saw and then chipping and it's not going to be pretty but it will be worth it in the end. Alright, here we go. Alright, in that time lapse video what you saw me doing was basically pulling out all this oil that was in the roots. There was, and there's still, you can still see some, there's still some clay in there. The hard part I did was actually take off about a half inch off the bottom of that big cut across the bottom there. Not sure you can see it but that cut is about the size of my hand but anyhow. I also came back and worked the surface roots so that I could improve those. I cut a lot of roots, this tree had a lot of roots that were growing straight up actually because when I actually got it it was buried about this deep so many of the roots were growing up so I pruned those, got those out of the way and hopefully I've got the root ball small enough that it can go in that pot back there in the back. Just looking it doesn't look like it's going to bite. It's going to be really tight and it may never come out of that pot if I put it in but I think I can get it in there. Okay, it took a hell of a lot of work but I finally have the tree comfortable in the container. Now it's always difficult to find the best front for a round container but I've been looking at this one and looking all around. I've got a couple interesting places. I like the change in the glaze from here to here. Again just some more of that kind of change and a little blue to green. I think my favorite part of the container that I was right here, it kind of mimics backwards the repeats the spread of the roots. I think I'll choose this as the front of the container and I'll finish repotting. Okay, pran and here we go. This is the final state for now. Probably could do a little pruning, maybe we'll do a little pruning. I was massive on the roots, really hard on the roots, cut a bunch off. We got it into the container successfully. I think the tree will be just fine, it's nice and stable, it is extremely heavy. Eli, Waldo Street Pottery, man, I think this one came out very, very well. Thank you so much for helping me make my trees look better. You guys have a great day. Maybe you'll see me in the end. I don't have a lot of time. We'll see.