Sadly, I am out of the contest. Despite being kept under cover throughout what was a fairly warm winter, my contest tree did not survive. When I checked, it had dropped nearly all its leaves, the others followed soon thereafter and it never pushed any new ones.
Had a lot of plants act/react strangely this spring. Most notably, the “spare” azalea I separated from the contest tree when I originally acquired it did make it through in seemingly good shape - but never flowered despite having lots of buds. In ground lilac (10 ft high) produced literally three blossoms, and my in ground plums blossomed like crazy but aren’t fruiting. Maybe there was just one poorly timed cold night or something. . .