11/7/2020 The Blue Haired Girlfriend wants to develop a citrus plant that can live outdoors in our climate, which requires inventing a new kind of fruit. It’s probably a lifelong project. The only citrus plant that grows here is Poncirus trifoliata, the hardy orange. It is small and fierce, with gnarled branches, thorns, and hard fuzzy fruits too bitter to eat. She is growing 200 tiny angry citrus trees in pots on the balcony; they’re a year old now, cute and stabby as porcupines. The balcony has become a Tiny Angry Tree Sanctuary. 

When they’re bigger, she will breed the Tiny Angry Trees to eachother or to well-mannered indoor citrus and try to produce something sharp and fierce and sweet that will survive here.

The Tiny Angry Tree sanctuary has been invaded by liverworts, probably from spores on pots we reused. They’re flat green dirt ruffles that just lay about fancily on top of the soil. They’re not hurting the tiny angry trees, since they don’t have much in the way of roots; they just use nutrients and moisture from the top of the soil. They probably mean we gave the tiny angry trees more fertilizer than they needed.

Mostly liverworts reproduce asexually. They make little cups of spores to catch raindrops and use the water to spray the spores over to the next pot.

Not the inhabitants of Poncirus trifoliata #143! This is the party pot, and everyone has decided to opt for sexual reproduction and sprout some palm-tree-shaped genitalia. The Tiny Angry Tree, thorny and fierce, is surrounded by a knee-high thicket of horny liverwort appendages.