Planting with water rationing: Deep-rooted trees may help. You don't need a dwarfing rootstock to keep deciduous fruit trees small. Choose rootstocks suited to your soil. Prune when the trees are not dormant to limit growth. Prune apricots when rain is not expected for several weeks, to limit disease spread. When trees are just getting started, you can haul water out in a bucket if you need to, using water which you would otherwise waste (keep a bucket in the shower, etc.) Watering deeply, not too frequently, is preferable. Or, you can use drip irrigation which lowers your total water usage. Multi-grafting: You can purchase multi-grafted trees to increase the number of varieties in your yard, or plant trees close together and keep them small. Either option is especially appropriate for early-blooming trees which need cross-pollination before bees are very active, like many of the Pluots. Multi-grafted trees need care to keep the most vigorous variety from over-taking the others. Prune when the tree is dormant where you want to encourage tip growth, when the tree is not dormant where you do not want to encourage new growth. If you want to try grafting your own varieties, you can get some valuable instructions on this forum. See link below. If you love to cook, there are several possibilities among the plums, in addition to Santa Rosa and the European plums. Laroda was named by Sunset several years ago as the best Japanese plum for cooking. It resembles Santa Rosa, but is sweeter and hangs on the tree in good condition longer. Santa Rosa is still a classic for flavor (some may come from a wild California plum), as a pollenizer and for ease of care. Laroda is not self-pollenizing like Santa Rosa. Other Japanese cultivars recommended for cooking are Mariposa or Satsuma (for jam), Wickson (for sauce), Nubiana (turns red). Queen Anne is said to keep its shape when cooked. Flavor King Pluot is also recommended for cooking. As in cobblers and sauce for ice cream. And of course apricots and cane berries are great for cooking. Here is a link that might be useful: Grafting tips

I have been looking for one to photograph for two years with no luck. Then I saw two in one day 50 miles apart when I wasn't even looking for them. To make matters worse, I didn't have my camera for either.

We've signed the contract for our pool! We're very excited and hope to be swimming by the end of June. Below is a scan of the plans. A few notes: - shallow end depth will be 3'6", not 3'. - LED light in middle of the pool will be moved a bit to the left so it's facing more towards the shallow end. - anybody see a problem with only 1 skimmer in this design? It will be plumbed with the main drains for the reasons explained by my PB here: "We almost always plumb the skimmer and main drains together. Its basically used as a safety for the pump, if for some reason the water level were to fall below the skimmer opening the float valve will close and suction will only come from the main. If they are plumbed seperately the skimmer will continue to suck and starve the pump." Does this sound reasonable? What are the advantages of having them plumbed separately? - gas and electric runs are about 140' and will go along the left side next to the retaining wall (which is about 6' high) and then along the tow of the slope to the pad. Pad will be blocked off with some sort of fencing or possibly a stuccoed wall. I'd really prefer to have the equipment on the left side near the retaining wall but there's two problems with that. First is it can't be next to the house as there is only 7' of clearance and the equipment would prevent any bobcat's from being able to access our backyard in the future if needed. Second is if it was placed kind of in line with the section marked "P/A" next to the retaining wall, it would be unsightly and possibly too noisy being right next to the deck. Any other suggestions?

Thanks Boby. My computer crashed last winter and I lost all my websites, stored passwords etc. This was one of the sites I had on favorites and then when I reconstructed that list, it got left off. Autonut emailed me today and I remembered the website and then came here and had to ask for my user name and password to log on! uuuuuftah that made me break out into a sweat-way too much work for a Saturday morning! ;-) I have missed you guys too. Anyhow, to answer your email questions Autonut, our insulated pool is working great. This spring it was about 8-10 degrees warmer than our neighbors so we started swimming early-in April. It stayed above 80 until about 2 weeks ago, when we had a sudden cold snap here-now it is in the low 70's. Autonut, Aussie pools went out of business after they finished our pool but this web site you sent looks like the same folks (same address-same exact technology-I am positive it is the same guy) with a new name. You should check into their business history etc and see if they have any complaints under this company name and also check under their old name. You can go to the California state contractors board and type in their name. If they are a licensed contractor, they will show up. Since they appear to just be doing DIY kits now, they may not have to be. They were licensed before under the name Aussie Pools or Aussie Pool and Spa. I had heard they were going to move to just selling the DIY kits and get out of the business of building pools. Ours was the last one the completed I believe. We never had any problems with them but we were also fortunate that nothing major went wrong with our pool after they finished it. I think they filed bankruptsy so there would have been no recourse for us. The only problem we have had has been with our salt water generator-it has been replaced 3 times! If I had to do it over again, I would not have bought that. But, the manufacturer has been great and speedy about replacing it each time without hassle, so that is fortunate for us. Another thing to consider is we are in Northern Cal where it never gets below freezing really, so I cannot speak for how this type of pool would do in a much colder climate. I will say it has never been 20 degrees warmer as they claim on their site. At most it has been 10 degrees. But, 10 degrees is a lot during those early and late season swimming months. It definitely buys us an additonal 6-8 weeks of swimming beyond what our friends with traditional pools get. We cannot speak to the heating cost savings as we dont heat the pool in the winter. Our spa that was built by them with the same technology has worked well. In the winter we use it 3-5 times a week and that probably added about 100 dollars to our gas bill. Because it never drops below 65 in between use, it heats up to 101 really fast and then we turn the heat off and it stays at 101 for up to an hour without the heater on. Well worth the cost for the physical and mental benefits! I dont know how that compares to the cost of running a regular spa in this area. We talked to probably 5 previous customers before we built and we actually got to test swim in 2 pools. Everyone said they got extra heat out of the technology-ranging from 5-10 degrees. All of those pools are in this same Northern Cal area. I hope this helped. Drex