Day 197: They had me worried! The white Akebia vine was blooming profusely, producing lots of pollen with nowhere to go. The purple vine...the bearer of fertile female flowers...wasn't doing so well. I'd pruned both back radically last fall when the trellis collapsed, and the purple one hadn't taken well to the haircut. It was only showing a few male flowers last week and, as you may recall, the cross must be made with pollen from the white vine's male flowers to the females of the purple. It doesn't work the other way around, as my experiments have shown. Last night, I discovered a few receptive female blooms, and dashed into the house to get my horticultural paintbrush. Okay, Akebia fruits are pretty strange and certainly not to everyone's taste, but they are secondary to the fun I get from cross-pollinating. That said, I vowed that this year, I wouldn't go overboard, limiting myself to no more than a dozen potential Akebia pods at full ripeness.
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