Monkey thorn trees and their thorns - I love these trees but despise working on them despite my undying love for them. I have a bad habit of trimming the thorns when I want to work on the trees and I always end up removing the foliage each year just to have the leaves grow back in smaller scale so as to fit the tree but, I have to add that this is one of the best looking monkey thorn trees I have seen in a while, especially the bark on this tree. Quite amazing. I'm guessing it has to be around 12 years old? They can be quite deceiving during winter periods when it seems as though the tree has died or is in the process of dying. They tend to go into a very deep dormancy at times. Not sure if I am the only one with that experience or not but they remain remarkable trees which can survive with very little basic care. Speaking of ficus, I was given a ficus benjamina today for free, apparently a cutting but wow I was so surprised at the trees/branch quality. It looks as though it was grown in an environment constantly experiencing gale force winds. The entire trees branches have grown to the side with one dead (soon to be jin) branch on the opposite side, just need to kill off the little sucker at the bottom. Thanks for sharing.