[conspire] Happy news

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Paul Zander (paulz at ieee.org):

> The conversation caused me to pay attention to my tree.  It had one
> fruit last year and one earlier this year.  Over the course of the
> last year, I selectively thinned out the lemon which was shading its
> small neighbor.  Now the calamondin has a fair number of blossoms and
> many new shoots.  

Glad to hear it.

> I hope Rick's trees are happy.

I lost one small lemon tree in a big ceramic pot, over the past year, 
strictly through inattention:  There's a citrus 'dell' behind the hedge,
and I failed to look after the needs of some of the potted trees back
there.  I notice that, for reasons unclear to me, the soil in pots
appears to compress or wash out or something, such that in any event the
plant sinks in the pot as the apparent depth of soil between the surface
and the bottom of the pot decreases.  This lemon sank until it had only 
about 50 cm of soil height, and died.  I should have noticed the problem
earlier and repotted it.

Nearby, I'd seen a rangpur lime tree and a tangerine tree in similar
distress, repotted them, and they recovered -- but I failed to act in
time to save the lemon.

As to my troubled calamansi / calamondin, after the graft stock
recovered for a while, dammit, the graft died completely, so what
remains is healthy non-calamondin rootstock.  I've just now ordered six
calamondin budstock cuttings from Citrus Clonal Protection Program at UC
Riverside (your kind recommendation) -- just in time for the May 5th
cutting and shipment.