A Pictorial History Of A China Berry Tree

In 2001, the "Peckerwoods from Dogpatch" (that's what I called the neighbors who owned the property to the East of my home) decided that they could no longer afford to live where they were, and so in the middle of the night, they packed up and disappeared. No one knew they were gone, until a couple of days later, I noticed that they hadn't been around, and that the door to their 80'-0" double-wide mobile home was wide open, and so I went to see what that was all about.
The place was a mess, and on the counter in a plastic pot was this little slip of a China Berry Tree, with leaves all wilted from lack of water. Well, I "liberated" the poor little old thing, and brought it to my place and not giving it much of a chance to live, watered it and set it in a window where it could get sunlight. I awakened the next morning, to find all the leaves perked back up, and the little old thing was doing its damnedest to survive.
I maintained it, but found that it didn't like the half-day of sunlight that it was getting and so I re-potted it and put it in the direct sunlight out on my front walk with some other plants, and it started doing fine.
Well, Winter came and ALL the leaves fell off, and I thought that it might have finally died.
But the next Spring, it put out leaves, and started to flourish. And this went on for another year. And again, when Winter came all the leaves dropped off, but this time I wasn't so concerned because I now understood that this is just the way that this tree lives.
Then in the Spring of 2003, I decided to plant it in my front yard, and so a friend of mine who is a brick mason, made a brick planter for it, which I filled with potting soil. I then dug a hole, and prepared it with a gallon of root stimulator, and planted the now thriving tree in the hole, and stood back.
In the first year, it grew to be almost six feet tall. Then this year, it has grown to almost nine feet tall, and it is still going strong.
The following JPGs are the pictorial history of the growth of the China Berry Tree, which will be updated as the years go by. The growth of this tree is remarkable, and it has even produced an offspring which I have planted in another location, and it too is a growing fool! Its progress will be documented along with this CBT.
And as will inevitably happen, the second tree will engender an offspring, which I will plant in yet another location.
Anyway, the flourishing of these trees are a source of wonder to me, and I hope that you find their progress as stimulating and inspiring as I have.