Cityman, I'm in a fairly similar climate in North Carolina. I wonder if you have acidic, mostly clayey soil as well. To the extent that our conditions are similar, figs definitely stand out on your list as a very rewarding fruit to grow, requiring practically zero purchased inputs. For me the different rabbiteye type blueberries varieties have got to be my next most rewarding, easy-to-get-to-succeed fruit. They take some work as far as keeping weeds down, and I watered them pretty carefully (even more so than the average fruit tree) the first year or two, but they produce lots of high quality fruit without any real troubles. Muscadines would be another similarly naturally-happy-in-my-location fruit, although I don't value them quite as highly as figs and blueberries. There are lots of other options for fruit that will be more like your figs if you want to take the path of least resistance, some of which I've seen succeed for other people nearby but have only recently planted myself. Especially given my low-input management preferences, I should have invested heavier in some of those less common fruits instead of the fruits I was used to eating from the store. I think hardy kiwis are about the best fruit ever, for example, but I've only gotten to eat fruit from other people's vines so far. As far as the other trees you already have planted, pears, especially if they're fireblight resistant cultivars and your general location and specific site aren't too prone to fireblight, may be your next easiest fruit to produce a good crop with. Some pears just take more time. (Asian pears are really tasty, easier to ripen -- you can just pick them ripe off the tree instead of the more involved process with regular European pears -- and they come on faster.) Some sour cherries also seem to be pretty easy to grow. I have a sour cherry tree that was planted in an out of the way place before I moved here, and with no more care than bush hogging around it once or twice a year it produces a good crop about every other year. Birds take up to half the crop in the good years and about all the remaining crop in years with late frosts. I would expect sweet cherries, peaches, and plums to be your most challenging crops because of fungal diseases and insect pests (and possibly late frosts and with the sweet cherries additionally birds and cracking.) Some people seem to be able to grow apples with mostly just cosmetic issues with hardly any inputs and other people seem to struggle to get anything even with multiple sprays. If I had given more attention to grass/weed competition I might be able to say more about apples already. Some trees, like, for example, my pears, chestnuts, peaches, plums, mulberries -- selected native and native cross mulberries are another easy-to-get-to-succeed fruit, by the way -- seemed to get by fine for me with very minimal attention to grass/weed competition, but other trees (most notably pawpaws) seem to really languish under that kind of competition. I guess one thing I'm trying to recommend is that you figure out which of your trees have decent hopes of succeeding in your location with the kinds of inputs (whether sprays, watering, mulching, bird netting, trellising, amount of pruning, etc., etc.) you're willing to invest in them and then concentrate on those trees and possibly find new additions that will match your style and location best. If you can find other fruit growers in your immediate area and find out what works for them with what kind of inputs I think those are possibly your best places to start the process of learning what you're wanting to learn. I also wouldn't underestimate how much better cultivars of the same fruits there may be for your location than what the local big box stores sell.

I use sunbird on one pc and I also use the windows live one with my hotmail, most email clients have a calender and reminder with them so even if you just set up a freebie email account simply to use that feature you could and you can have the reminders sent to other email addresses which is what I do so even if you don't use that email address you can set it's calender up to send out your reminders to the email address you do use. I like the one with hotmail /live mail. I also on my windows machines use a lot of widgets and they have all kinds of widgets that do those kinds of tasks, I have mine to come on with the pc and stay on my desktop, they have several of the stickies varieties. just google yahoo widgets and you will be in widget heaven.

"When you set an appointment, to the right of the calendar are the details of that appointment when you click that day or reminder. There's a line that says "Reminder" and has a drop down that will let you pick when it reminds you. In the upper right, look under File>Options Be sure there's a check beside-" "Reminders should show when Windows Calendar is not running" Good luck a lot of people have issues with this same problem.

FANTASTIC tips, Joann! (Loved the sock item--that's exactly the kind of thing that gets shoved to the corner of your mind and gets remembered only when you're standing in that school auditorium/gym the next year!) The calendar function on my Mac has really helped me keep track of bill-paying, appointments, due dates for library books (with spaces for noting a new title I need to get when I go back to the library) and so many other daily-life tasks. And you don't need an "electronic calculator," as has been noted (oops, pun not intended!). IMHO, what you DON'T want to do is have a series of reminders. How many lists on little pieces of paper do you have now? Unless you really have a severe memory problem, it's a time waster to have one calendar you go to for the basics but one that forces you to look at ANOTHER piece of paper or computer site to get all the details. A second or third day planner or notebook is just one more thing you can misplace. One alternative to a computer calendar and a paper notepad in your pocket is your cellphone. Even the basic cheapie phone that I have (it's not a smartphone) has a reminder alarm component. You can set a series of alarm clock settings for tasks, like "dr. appt" at 11 a.m. and "buy bananas" and prioritize them as well. I've used the phone to remind me of the next drug-dosage times, very handy when you have a cold and want to get some sleep but then wake up wondering how long it's been since you took your last dose of Nyquil!