Almost exactly 7 years ago to the day, I gave up on a huge 6-inch avocado I’d been coveting for weeks, waiting for it to soften and ripen, and just sawed into it with a plastic utensil knife. It almost broke my knife and wouldn’t slice through, so I had to pry it open. I found the flesh totally hard and rubbery, bitter and inedible. But the white part of the seed had popped out of the brown outer shell, looking like a little brain, so I put it in a cup of water to see what would happen. I documented that here.

The little avocado brain sprouted roots in the cup, then a stem, then leaves. Almost a year later, I realized I couldn’t just have this avocado plant sitting in a plastic cup of water forever, so with some help from my court reporter, we potted it. It became sort of a courtroom mascot, healthy, straight, with very even and regular leaves.

It grew…and grew…and people came to my courtroom to see if it were really true. Did I have an avocado plant growing from the seed that I nurtured myself from “birth?” It was so healthy it was later moved to a bigger pot and couldn’t sit on the corner of my desk anymore. People coming by asked me when we could expect avocado fruit. I didn’t know, so I asked around, and learned that there’s a “female” avocado type and a “male” avocado type, and the two need to cross-pollinate so ideally, the two would be in a grove close together with bees traveling between the two trees’ flowers. I don’t have a grove, so my dad came up with a different solution after asking a botanically-gifted buddy of his: grafting.

In the meantime, Mr. W and I got married in 2008, moved into our new house, brought the little avocado tree (it was a skinny little tree by this time) with us, and eventually planted it into our backyard.

And then 6 more years later, we finally did it! My dad came over on Sunday and did some magic with a sprig of avocado he’d collected from his buddy’s tree and left at our house to acclimate to the environment for a few months. My little avocado tree, now taller than I am and with branches, all sturdy (but still skinny) in the backyard, is no longer a virgin. My reporter and I had always referred to the tree as “he,” since the energy felt like a little boy to us, and as my dad prepared to graft, he observed that there are FINALLY flowers on the tips of the branches/sprigs. The only way to tell male from female types are from the flowers; the female flowers have a small “bud” at the base of the flower and the male does not. The avocado tree is MALE, just like we thought. (Maybe I should name him Riley.)

So now the female branch in its own little pot is bonded to the male branch. Dad is keeping the pot intact to lessen the shock and to increase chances of the branch’s survival. He’ll check back on it in a week but meantime, we were instructed to keep the little branch watered. If the graft “takes,” I guess he’ll trim the grafted part off the plant. I think.

I hope we can get a few avocados out of my plant son before Mr. W makes us move out-of-state.