Why not? Well, you can do it, but you may or may not want to. Carving is more traditionally used on conifers (pine, larch, fir), so if that matters to you (being traditional about bonsai) then you may not choose to do it, but others have and if they do a good job it doesn't look terrible at all, though possibly a little strange. However, why not just cut the unwanted parts off flush with the trunk (or branches) with a concave cutter? Why not Google 'bonsai' with 'jin' and 'shari' (the terms for carving) and learn more about them?

catsrose, trust me, having blooming roses doesn't make a whit of difference. I'm still seeing all the weeds and everything that's less than perfect (that would be the whole garden). Tomorrow I'm having a rosarian friend over who's never seen my garden before. I worked today (the kind of job they pay you for), and I'm tired, but I know I have to go out there and do "stuff". Of course I stopped at the nursery on the way home to try and fill up some of the bare patches. Just realized that some of the bare patches are in mostly shade and what I bought isn't suitable. Now I'm even more tired. And yet.... there are times when I walk outside, usually in the morning or in the slanting late afternoon sun, when it all looks gorgeous to me and for a little while I'm proud that I've created this (I should say we since there would be no garden without my husband digging endless holes). Or I'll look at a bouquet of old roses and be thrilled that this rare beauty is a part of my life. I don't know if we'd appreciate it so much if we didn't have to work so hard to achieve it. That's what I tell myself. And I love being addicted and like most addictions the feeling only gets stronger over time. Ingrid

Both are common lichens and indeed very decorative. The one to the left must be some kind of Beard Lichen (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usnea) while the one to the right must be some kind of Cup licen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cladonia). About growing them I don't really know. Probably it is possible to collect specimens with the wood they grow on and keep that ind an atmosphere akin to where they were found. But that won't give you a lot of lichen as slow indeed is very slow - some mm/year. Simply gooling "growing lichen" gives some interesting hits though. /Hans Olav

Doesn't Blu Ray generally have more supplemental content, including online? I haven't done a comparison, but I found a review of the Deadwood blu ray set that says this: HBO’s Blu-ray set includes everything. I can’t wait until they do this with The Wire though that was 4×3, so it makes a little less sense, but still. The show and all the DVD supplements are presented over a thirteen disc set. Almost all of the supplementary material could have been relegated to one disc, but this set represents the HBO way – all class, all luxury. Every episode is presented in picture-perfect widescreen (1.78:1) and in 5.1 DTS-HD surround. The presentation is immaculate. This is how the show should look, and the rich details and dust and swagger are preserved here. There's more about what's included in the Blu Ray further on in the review. http://collider.com/deadwood-the-complete-series-blu-ray-review/ Here's another review which talks about the HD transformation and lists all the extras. I think it says that it has all the extras from the DVD set plus more, but it's too early for me to read it closely. http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/46021/deadwood-the-complete-series/