Maybe it won’t turn out to be the slow grower I expected after all

So what I’ve been told is that if your apricot tree’s growth tips get disturbed for any reason they stop right there and that’s it till the next spring: no side branching from below that point, no new leaves nor fruiting tips, nothing. And it’s easy to tell, because the new leaves and limbs start out red.

It went from pot to ground in the spring and almost immediately that was that. Would the limbs or trunk stretch out a bit, at least? I took a measuring tape out every so often but the answer was nope. August was the same as April. I figured after four years in a large pot, it was concentrating on stretching out its roots in their new digs. I certainly hoped so.

We had a heat wave of a few days and then a couple of cool nights and maybe it decided to call it good, that’s a winter, it’ll do. Maybe?

Because a few weeks ago it started doing this. Not the whole tree, just these two limbs. A few days ago  the upper one started adding a side shoot.

The lower one, meantime, got its end chomped off by a bug and I thought, Well, that’s that, then.

It took a deep breath for a couple of days and then sent out a do-over from the node.

I don’t know what I don’t know why it’s doing all this now, but I like it. Did it get its equinoxes flipped? It does make me wish I had the botany degree I almost chose in college.