Nice cleanup on the lower branches- people often don't bother, and they don't understand what they're throwing away...
Back to the phenotype thing for a moment; this is the reason I've run exclusively with clones, because I want a proven pheno, a known producer of good (or great!) quality. There's a slacker in every family... I know... I see that mofo in the mirror every morning! ;)
Ya want an Aussie story, ay? Waaaalll, Maite- when I was a wee youngsta, we rented a car to drive from Darwin up north to Sydney. That poor car... we had no idea about the casual nature of road maintenance in the Outback in those days. Between Land Trains (semi trucks hauling anywhere up to 5 or 6 trailers!), 'speed bumps'- here in the States they're called 'Mesas', and washouts, that poor Ford lost 3 windshields, two oil pans and a gas tank. And we ended up on a bus for the last third of the trip!
One of my favorite memories was driving at night down these deserted dirt roads- it was cooler, because the AC was useless with no windshield- and we would have to suddenly slow down whenever we saw kangaroos. Why? Unlike deer, these crazy animals would JUMP OUT IN FRONT OF THE CAR on purpose- so they could use the headlights to see where they're going and hop down the road in front of us! So there we would be, driving about 20 mph, watching the tails of a whole mob o' 'roos as they bounded along! They could keep it up for hours at a time, amazing animals.
I got more where that came from, if you're interested...
