Checking git-cherry-pick Use Case

[Jon Loeliger <jdl@freescale.com>]

Guys,

Could you sanity check me on two issues with
my "work flow" here, please?  Maybe I could do
something better/easier?

I have a repo with a bunch of commits coming from
several different places (me, co-worker, remote repo, etc).
I'm applying co-worker's patches into "cow" branch.
I'm applying my changes directly to "jdl" branch"
I'm pulling in "origin" crude.

Ultimately, I want to do development against the "sum total
set of all known patches supplied by anyone".  Oh yeah.
So I make a "dev" branch that has "cow" + "jdl" + "origin".

However, at the end of the development day, I want to send
just _my_ patches upstream.  Thus, I need to have my changes
sitting around neatly on the "jdl" branch.

I don't want to develop in the "jdl" branch, as it doesn't
have everything needed to test stuff properly (missing "cow"
code, eg.).  So I actually edit and commit in the "dev"
branch where everything is unioned.

To isolate just my changes out of the "dev" branch into 
the "jdl" branch, I cherry pick them like this:

    $ git checkout dev
    $     <do edit-compile-test cycle until all is well>
    $ git commit -m "Stuff jdl made up and committed"

Now, things look, in part, like this:

        ! [dev] Stuff jdl made up and committed
         * [jdl] Early stuff jdl made up
          ! [origin] Original stuff
        ---
        +   [dev] Stuff jdl made up and committed
        +   [dev^] Merge branch 'jdl'
        ++  [jdl] Early stuff jdl made up
        +++ [origin] Original stuff

Then I pull that last "dev" commit over to "jdl":

    $ git checkout jdl
    $ git cherry-pick -r dev

Now it looks like this:

        ! [dev] Stuff jdl made up and committed
         * [jdl] Early stuff jdl made up
          ! [origin] Original stuff
        ---
         +  [jdl] Stuff jdl made up and committed
        +   [dev] Stuff jdl made up and committed
        +   [dev^] Merge branch 'jdl'
        ++  [jdl^] Early stuff jdl made up
        +++ [origin] Original stuff

My first question is that I expected to see 
something more like this (hand edited):

	! [dev] Stuff jdl made up and committed
         * [jdl] Early stuff jdl made up
          ! [origin] Original stuff
        ---
        ++  [dev] Stuff jdl made up and committed
        +   [dev^] Merge branch 'jdl'
        ++  [jdl^] Early stuff jdl made up
        +++ [origin] Original stuff

That is, the _same_ commit is now in both the "dev"
and "jdl" branches, so why does it have two lines here?

And finally, the "general" question:  Is this a sane
work-flow used by anyone else?  Or is there a different
perhaps even better way to do what I described above?

Thanks,
jdl