Unfinished business: Vinca, Murraya, shoplifter

Just three odds and ends today, referring to previous posts, plus decorative but unrelated photos of Reiger Begonias.

1) The Vinca minor sport:

A few days back, I realized that WCW hadn't seen the Vinca sport yet, so I went and found it and showed it to her, expecting her to be as excited as I was, and she was all like, "Oh. That's 'Wojo's Gem.'"

It's who?

It turns out that there is already a plant on the market like ours, so this is not the way we're going to make our millions. Oh well. I was even told that it was a fairly vigorous grower, considering how little green tissue it contains, though I was told that by a salesman so I'm not sure if this is true. In any case, we still have the Dracaena, which is doing okay so far.


2) The rescue Murraya paniculata trees:

Too little, too late. Or possibly too much too late. Whatever it was, we were too late, and there wasn't anything saveable. Which may be just as well; the one Murraya paniculata we've got already is kind of a pain to water and move around, and these two were both bigger than that.


3) The shoplifter:

He came back in. I had to go outside to check his vehicle to make sure it was the same guy, and it was, and so then I kind of, um, ran up to him and let him know how this whole cutting thing worked, though I was pretty thrown by him showing up again, and there were a lot of words trying to come out of my mouth all at once so I'm not sure how coherent I was actually being.

I'd report his general attitude on the situation, except it was hard to read: he said something to begin with to the effect of, well, you know I'm doing this tissue-culture thing, and I (not wanting to get another full lecture about this and have the conversation derailed already) was like, yes, yes, I know why you were taking them but that's not really the point. He also gave me kind of an eye-roll (not a literal eye-roll, it was kind of the audio equivalent, whatever that is) about So what you're saying is that if I want the leaves, I should buy the plant, which was irritating because 1) I dislike it when people beat me to my conclusions, and 2) I dislike it more when they beat me to the wrong conclusions. The actual answer, of course, is that if you want the leaves, you can take just the leaves; you just have to acknowledge that you're taking something, and work out a price at the front counter. Or, better still, ask people about a price before you go taking anything.

The whole conversation was kind of baffling, as was the previous one, because this is all stuff that we take so for granted. It's incredibly weird and awkward to be in the position of trying to explain, you know, capitalism to someone in his late 30s / early 40s. ("You see, there's this place called the U.S. Mint, which is where they make the money, and then they send it to the banks, and people exchange the money for goods and services with one another. . . .")

And then finally, it was even more frustrating, because for reasons I'm not entirely clear on, the front counter person, who wasn't around for the original theft but who had, nonetheless, been filled in on that when this guy came in, declined to charge him retroactively for the cuttings, even after he brought the idea up to her. I wasn't there for any of that, though, and didn't find out until yesterday. In the long scheme of things, it's not that big of a deal, and he did buy another plant so we're probably pretty well covered, but it's still annoying to go through this whole emotional thing and then have it not pan out at the end because the cashier didn't feel comfortable charging the guy for something just because he didn't have it (the thing she was charging him for) on him right at that moment.

But at least it's been more or less resolved.