“I don’t know how my parents did it for the first 20 years," Was said. More: Growing your own citrus trees indoors during a Wisconsin winter is fun, fruitful and frustrating More: It started with a seed, and then people all over the country chimed in with sweet stories of their long-lived citrus trees It's 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. It then gets wrapped in blankets and tied with bungee cords and twine to rein in the branches to better navigate it through the door. It can grow as much as a foot during the summer, so Was usually prunes it back in the fall to reduce its size. Getting the nearly 100-pound tree in the house and back out again is quite the biannual production. 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.”
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. It moved in with him when he got his own apartment, and for the last 30 years, home sweet home has been Was and wife Linda Gendrich's house in Wauwatosa, where it's officially part of the family. It spent the first 20 years at his parents’ house, graduating from plastic pots to whiskey barrels. Not only did it sprout, but 61 years later, the tree it grew into is still with him. 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. Still, Was couldn’t love that grapefruit tree more.
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 bit of a thorn in his wife's side. It’s the member of the family Mark Was only lets in the house when it gets cold outside.
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