Toni, I think she meant that she bought a plant, but had she bought a fruit at the grocer it would be $5. I'd say they grow in alkaline soil, because they like the same kind of soil as olives, grapes, and rosemary, well drained sandy soil. For this time of year $5 can be expected for fresh figs. Out of CA or other Medeteranian states figs will be quite pricy, because they don't travel well when ripe and really don't taste as good if not left on the vine (Yes figs are vines) to ripen. They would have to be greenhouse grown if grown in a large enough scale to go to market. That's why most of the time you only see dried figs, which are really good treats in themselves. Given enough light, you should get more fruit eventually, most figs are self fertile and have two crops a year.

First you need to find out if your problem is actually Late Blight, or if it is something else. Good Late Blight pics: http://www.longislandhort.cornell.edu/vegpath/photos/lateblight_tomato.htm Pics and/or good descriptions of multiple diseases: http://kdcomm.net/~tomato/Tomato/d_out1.html -- take a look at B. and C. http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/DiagnosticKeys/TomWlt/TomWiltKey.html -- Begin with the green chart. Look at the diseases which have an X in the "Stem" column and also say "leaves" in the right-most column. Do they match your symptoms? http://vegdis.cas.psu.edu/VegDisases/Identification_files/tomatoleafspot.htm#septorialeaf

Turn frozen fruit into sorbet (bananas taste like ice cream). Most will require a little sweetening, but pineapple canned in its own juice (freeze and then cut into chunks) pleases most people without any extra. Make just about anything into spreads, dips, mousses, patees, salsas, chutneys, etc. You can chop up or puree fruit, vegetables, canned or cooked beans, cheese, fish and meats for these. Doing this is particularly useful for frozen stuff where the texture isn't as good as fresh. For example, instead of letting extra cheese dry up or go moldy, I freeze it and then turn it into cheese sauces or spreads. Even cream cheese, which falls apart when frozen. Shred and chop vegetables. Admittedly, if you want consistent large pieces it's best to do them by hand, but not everything needs that. For example, homemade cole slaw is a breeze. (A tip for more-even small pieces is shred them first and then chop briefly.) With practice it is possible to produce attractive vegetable slices, but not all the slices will be acceptable, so I use the processor only for big slicing jobs. As noted above, you can chop up your own meat -- important for chili where the meat should be coarser than ground. And fish for gefilte fish or quenelles, or even tuna loaf. Or use it to shred large amount of cheese (I'd rather use a hand grater for a small amount than clean the processor). I bake low-carb and grain-free so I'm always grinding nuts (even the pre-ground ones can stand being made finer) as well as other ingredients. When I use canned fish (for savory breads) I puree the bones for more calcium. (Or for coarser things like salmon loaf, put the bones in first to puree them while leaving the flesh chunky.) For grain-based baking, it makes dough-making a breeze for even the heaviest or slackest doughs. And turn your stale bread into breadcrumbs. What doesn't a food processor do well? Large amounts of liquid -- use a blender for that. Perfect cubes of any size. A high yield of perfect slices. And small jobs, like chopping up a few herbs or handful of vegetables, are best left to the mini-processors.

Keep a couple of things in mind before making your decision: digital format stores nicely and is convenient; however digital formats have changed greatly over the past few years and are expected to continue to change... think about those irreplaceable -and unreplaceable- Polaroids. If you do go digital, wrap the original photos in acid-free paper and then vacuum-pack so your great-grandkid has a chance to see them. Which is another thing, if you don't want these and your kids don't want these; maybe they aren't worth keeping under any circumstance -especially if they are out-of-focus or photos of your cousin's first dog. But if you do keep a few photos, be sure they (each and every one) are well-labeled and dated. DH has albums with pictures of many, many relatives -- some are marked 'Uncle Joe' or 'Mom's Aunt Sue'... no one now alive has the vaguest idea who these folks were, and although I've heard that Uncle Joe's real name was Donald I don't know his last name, and none of the cousins today know who was the "Mom" that had an Aunt Sue. Now me, I have no photos of any relatives, because mum was sure no one would ever be interested in the past -- and when I was in my twenties and thirties, I surely was not interested. So mum disposed of everything before she passed on. Nowadays, I would dearly love to have at least one picture of my parents or grandparents. And the last thought: If the group pictures are dated and you know the details (where, why, when the pic was taken), you may find an organization that would like to have them. Genealogical societies may interested if the people are well identified; and there are historical sites that collect dated photos of the world around us.