So I think I'm able to apply a leaf texture to the little squares that make up my leaves in Blender. I think. The alpha channel doesn't seem to be working quite properly, and all the leaves wind up red (they're supposed to be green). It took me forever to even get this far. There's a "use alpha" button in one of the texture windows, and you'd think that checking that would be enough. That's sensible, you know? You tick the button that makes Blender use the texture's alpha channel, and Blender uses the texture's alpha channel.

Of course, this is Blender, where nothing is sensible. Or sane. Or easy. You have to tweak at least two more settings, all of them scattered across other windows, in order to have Blender use the texture's alpha channel.

I am becoming increasingly convinced there is a special circle of hell reserved for those that designed Blender's interface, one in which demons make them perform simple tasks in ludicrously complicated and unintuitive ways. This is truly the worst interface of any program I've ever dealt with, and every time I attempt to do something, I discover new levels of badness. Nothing is easy with this program. Nothing.