Congrats on your prize! Although you're expecting frosty air soon, the ground won't freeze for a while. If you can make it think you want it to die, it should thrive beyond your wildest expectations! I've never tended one in a pot to have any basis for comparison, but the dug-up roots (from digging grass to make a new flower bed near a CM tree) that I casually threw in flower beds this spring considered their plight a challenge, and kept growing! I almost started a disastrous little forest of them. This plant has very determined roots.
LOL @ your signature line!
