Kentucky Blue Grass (KBG) is probably the dominant grass used in lawns in the Salt Lake Valley, so that is probably the grass you have now. It can deal with drought by going dormant, but as hot and dry as it has been lately, if it didn't get any water for three weeks, it may have died (part of my lawn died when a sprinkler head stopped rotating right after I did my monthly inspection). You could try to water it and see if it comes back, but you might be better off reseeding. If you want a lawn that will stay green without any additional water, you have pretty limited choices. Buffalo grass or a mixture of buffalo grass and blue grama will stay green without additional water (you may need to water once or twice in a year like this year). They're a little different color than what you're used to seeing. Buffalo grass is sort of gray green and grama is sort of blue green. The grama is a bunch grass and the buffalo grass spreads (and fills in) by stolons (above ground runners like a strawberry plant has). If you want a really soft lawn, you'll want to get a buffalo grass like legacy, that you can plant from plugs (no seeds that way--buffalo grass has prickly seeds). Buffalo grass isn't cheap, though, especially not from sod. Blue grama is pretty easy to get started, but it's tough to spread the seeds (they're like dust and often have a lot of chaff with them). In Orem, a buffalo grass lawn will probably not start to turn green until sometime in May and will probably start to turn brown in September. You might get a week or two more of green on either end than I would, so maybe early May to late September/early October. But it will definitely turn brown earlier in the fall than your current lawn and will definitely stay brown later in the spring. The grama will be green a little earlier in the spring and a little later in the fall than the buffalo grass. Two cool season grasses that will stay green with no water (may need a little in a year like this) are western wheatgrass and sheep fescue. I think Arizona fescue and Idaho Fescue will also stay green. western wheatgrass can be difficult to get started initially, but it spreads aggressively once it gets started. The fescues are all bunch grasses. Streambank wheatgrass and crested wheatgrass will stay alive with no additional water, but they'll go dormant once the rains stop and will green up again in the fall. Streambank wheatgrass spreads via rhizomes like western wheatgrass. Older varieties of Crested wheatgrass are bunch grasses but newer varieties like Roadcrest and Ephraim are mildly rhizomatous. Crested wheatgrass was introduced from Russia, and the others are all native. For buffalo grass and grama, you're probably too late to seed. Those should be seeded in late spring or early summer. I seeded a little grama a couple of weeks ago, but I was already cutting it close. The other grasses can be planted in the fall. If you haven't planted by September 15, I think I'd wait until early winter and dormant seed (seed when it's too cold for them to sprout and they'll germinate in the spring as soon as conditions are right). You'll have best results with any of these if you kill your existing lawn first. For the buffalo grass and grama, it's probably necessary. I'm assuming the water in the spot that died from too much water is from your watering, right? The reason I ask is that none of these grasses deal very well with too much water. They can generally deal with spring flooding, but if you water them like a KBG lawn, they'll die. The wheatgrasses and sheep fescue are less expensive than buffalo grass, but they're still a little pricy (although maybe not compared with the elite KBG seeds many people here buy). I can provide links to some places that sell the various seeds if you're interested.

I have bought them all on EBay from different sellers. They have all died within months of geting them. Then this last one was HUGE and is bloom and looked wonderful in the auction. What I got was a moldy dead mess,by the time it got to me. It was sent by priority mail...but it took over 5 days to get here. So it arrived 'cooked' and dead. And the seller refused to replace the Quite Riot...I was willing to loose the money of the other 2 violets..but she wasnt willing to compomise. And told me "to bad,I dont guarentee plants in the mail". 'Thats why the post office wont insure the boxes of violets.' That was her response. So she got her money and I got a box of dead violets. Including my first BIG Quite Riot. They tend to get mites within months of me getting them. Yet I dont have mites BEFORE I get the violet. And it always seems to happen to Quite Riot.

I quit smoking my beloved pipes and cigars in the early 80's after losing my hearing on several occasions and ending up in the hospital 5 times to get it back. Tests showed a severe allergy to tobacco. My ENT was not sure if I were losing my hearing due to the severe allergy of if I was losing it because nicotine, causing artery constriction, cut off the supply to my inner ears. I didn't know if I was going to stop, and it was very hard because smoking can be physically addictive and psychologically addictive, of course. The physical addiction property of nicotine, as you all know, has been made worse by manufacturers who have increasingly used tobacco with higher nicotine levels and psychologically addictive because smoking is a mood changer. Studiess show that to maximize your ability to stop smoking, use multiple means. Medication can be enormously helpful. But medication alone is not nearly as effective as medication and a treatment group. Even more success with medication, a treatment group, and a support group. Even much more enhanced recovery with medication, a treatment group, a support group, and exercise. Hypnosis is also beneficial 50 percent of the time, when used alone, but that is not a very high percentage, so I seldom used it in practice as an only treatment. Much more effective when used along with the other multiple strategies. If you choose to use hypnosis, please use it as only a part of the treatment and please see a person with good credentials, not a fly-by-nighter. Ask at his her office what their training is in hypnosis. When I was smoking and saw no effects on my health, I could always separate my emotional reactions and the knowledge that one day, smoking would probably kill me, as it had my family for generations on both sides. I would think, "Well, I feel pretty well, and I don't have cancer, what the hell, I'll quit another day." My brother, 15 years older than I, was my childhood hero. I flew him back from the Virgin Islands 15 years ago to get treatment for his throat cancer. He died 3 days later. Eight months ago, my beloved niece, his daughter, who had smoked for 40 years, developed COPD and emphysema. Visiting her in the hospital in Hattisburg after emergency hospitalization because she couldn't breathe, I asked her if she had been smoking just before she was rushed to the hospital. Indignantly, she said, I KNEW you were going to ask me if I still smoke?" She thought I was fussing at her, when instead I was trying to point out the link between her emergency and smoking the night before she was hospitalized. She also then developed cancer and just before she died on the way to the hospital two months ago, she had a cigarette and couldn't breathe. After the funeral, mourners including her huysband, their grown children, and her nieces and nephews talked about how it was such a tragedy for her to die at age 55. And this was said in the parking lot, as the whole family gathered to smoke in the parking lot after the funeral. I could only shake my head as I left. One of my beautiful grand nieces, as she lit her cigarette said, "Uncle Jimmy, it's hard to find people who don't smoke." I thought that I'd save for another day the fact that our state, Mississippi, has the nation's highest percentage of smokers, at 25 percent. I also saved for another day the information that with both her and her husband smoking, their close relationships among friend will be likely limited to other smokers. France puts in a country-wide smoking ban in restaurants this week, as their research shows half their smokers die os cancer and another 5,000 die each year from second-hand breathing. I well remember my dad saying that he'd rather smoke than live a few more years. Such is the power of this addiction to change normal thought. I remember how he made fun of his elderly cardiologist, who, speaking in a foreign accent, said, "Mr. Chaney, each cigarette you smoke is living driving a nail in your coffin." And we'd all laugh--my dad was a hilarious guy. When he died of his fourth heart attack, sitting and smoking at the kitchen table with my mother in 1972, we never again brought up our dad's hilarious sense of humor making fun of his heart doctor. To my mother's credit, she stopped smoking at age 65 after she developed emphysema. When she couldn't breathe right, she quit. Two successful fights with cancer had not been enough for her to stop. But she did, and she lived until nearly 80. Truly I will hope for your internal strength to go to those treatment programs and to stay with them. Fighting an addiction alone typically subverts your attempts at quitting and reduces you to using "strong will", an ineffective idea in treating addictions. As we all know. Jim

I am trying to grow some cultivars of those plants. Most are 1st or 2nd year and sometimes my selections were based on what was available where I was purchasing as much as anything else. Persimmon: Eureka, Fuyu, Great Wall, Izu, Matsumoto Wase Fuyu, Saijo, Tamopan. The only ones that fruited last year were a couple of my Fuyu and a Tamopan; they were in their 2nd year in the ground. I should have more types fruiting this year. My IZUs were just grafted this spring from scion wood I ordered, the rest were spring of 09 barefoot which I potted for a year and planted out this winter. Pomegranate: Kazke, Salavatski, Angel Red, Entek Habi Savehi. These are all 1st year plants for me, and some I just recent started as cuttings from UC Davis. All except Angel Red were selected for reputation of being some of the most cold-hardy. Some people have good luck with the commonly available "Wonderful" here but I did not and they froze out. Wonderful does pretty good in the taste trials I have seen and is most likely the one you find in your local produce section. I am probably going to leave my Red Angel potted at least until I can start some cuttings from it as it is not particularly hardy I have heard, but is reportedly has a very soft seed and very juicy. Jujube: Li, Sherwood These are 2 of the more readily available cultivars and my 1st year with them. I have recently read Sherwood will not fruit well in our humid climate, but it came out of Louisiana so maybe it will turn out alright. I believe I read that in a NAFEX thread and it suggested Tigertooth for the humid southeast. In a couple years I am going to try and graft on some other cultivars. Honey Jar seems always to get great taste reviews and one I will try for sure.