![]() ![]() ![]() – It’s the member of the family Mark Was lets in the house only when it gets cold outside. Not to name names – oops, it doesn’t have one – but it stands more than 6½ feet tall, barely fits through the door, is undeniably bottom-heavy, has been known to make a mess in the corner and has a reputation for being a thorn in his wife's side. Still, Was couldn’t love that grapefruit tree more. He was in second grade when he and his mom planted a seed from the half of grapefruit he was having for breakfast that morning. Not only did it sprout, but 61 years later, the tree it grew into is still with him. It spent the first 20 years at his parents’ house, graduating from plastic pots to whiskey barrels. It moved in with him when he got his own apartment, and for the past 30 years, home sweet home has been Was and wife Linda Gendrich's house in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, where it's part of the family. It summers out on the patio and has breezed through high winds tipping it over, deer sampling its leaves and squirrels using its pot to bury treasures. In the fall, it rides out the Wisconsin winters in a southeast corner of the house with a window view and a grow light for “a little oomph.”Ĭlimate change: What are the effects of climate change? Disasters, weather and agriculture impacts.īirds: Birds of a feather. Huddle together? Here's how birds keep warm amid frigid winter temperatures. ![]() Getting the nearly 100-pound tree in the house and back out again is quite the biannual production. ![]() It can grow as much as a foot during the summer, so Was usually prunes it back in the fall. It then gets wrapped in blankets and wrapped with bungee cords and twine to reign in the branches to better navigate it through the door. It has taken him, Gendrich and a neighbor to wrangle it, and even then somebody or some wall still gets scratched or poked by one of its sizable thorns. “I don’t know how my parents did it for the first 20 years," Was said. ![]()
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