ah- my pluot died a while back! i've had trouble with the cherry/plum clan with them getting the drippy, gooey lesions (can't recall what that is right now). i don't remember which one i had- most likely one of the dark crosses since those are the ones i like when you can buy them at the store. i don't know what variety of plum we have - they were here when we bought the house. of the 3 (one of which was barely alive when we bought it) only 1 remains. the fruit is small and rosey pink/purple, with good flavor, but they are clingstone and the pit is half of the fruit. so i mostly use them to make a killer pancake syrup. i suspect they were considered ornamental, and the closest edible i've found online for resemblance is santa rosa. love the blooms' fragrance in spring, too. sorry i'm not more help!

Jay ----I have gravel mulch (medium sized river rock pebbles) on the entire property, front and back. We hauled in tons. It comes with pros and cons. CONS---- digging is more difficult + you have to push the gravel away if digging up a plant, otherwise you bury the gravel. I am in the process of thinning out some grasses and I don't use a shovel for this reason. I'm using a hori-hori knife so I don't do too much disturbance to the gravel. A hoe like woods tea described wouldn't work either. You have to get down on your knees and pull stuff in gravel, often working your fingers into the space between the pebbles to grab hold of the weed. It gets washed down or buried under soil if on a slope or sometimes just during a heavy rain even when not on much of a slope. Gravel can work itself down pretty deep over time. Seeds come up very easy in it, that can be a pro or a con. It works both ways for me Your knees get sore if you garden like me and like to squat down with your knee or knees on the ground. When you rake leaves, you also rake gravel and I really hate leaves on my gravel. I have to sort out what I rake up so I don't toss my "we paid for that gravel and I ain't tossing it" gravel. PROS----It looks great and of course never breaks down. Its kind of the same effect you get when it snows and the garden looks neat with all that consistent layer of white around the plants instead of dark soil or leaves etc. You can go out right after a rain and walk around. It melts the snow off fast in winter and keeps the ground warmer on sunny winter days which we have a lot of. Its also good for drainage or plants that don't like wet feet or suffer crown rot on winter, it wicks away water rather than holding it around the plant base and it keeps the soil moist down low and provides a good sponge on top so water soaks in fast compared to compacted dry soil where you easily get runoff when it gets dry. We put in a deep layer of coarse sand under the river rock which also helps with good drainage. I keep it well weeded but weeds are easy to pull in that sandy soil and I like weeding so its not a problem for me to keep the parts clear that I want to stay clear. I do a lot of weeding in the gravel. I agree with woodstea, you don't need (or want) to add nitrogen. I don't think wood chip types of mulch look right around prairie plants myself, its too artificial and urban-flower-beddish looking. I've seen some yards where people leave swaths of trimmed grass creating defined areas set off by large, usually curved areas of prairie or tall grasses that grow pretty thick. It looks very neat, well defined yet still natural and in a case like that you wouldn't need mulch of any kind, the plants would shade the soil. Just cut it back in spring (easy). I have to trim everything by hand, one plant at a time, because we tossed the mower and besides, you wouldn't want to mow over or around the area with small pebbles that could fly out, those pebbles have a way of escaping from where they were put. We have several large rocks among the gravel and I like the way they look, especially in winter but they tend to get a bit lost in summer.

Oh baby -- here is the yard this morning -- A bunch o' roses -- Abraham Darby, Mutabilis, Dark Lady, Paul Bocuse, Mrs. Keays' Pink, Mary Day, Cl. Joseph's Coat, Leonie Lamesch, Margo's Baby, Heinrich Karsch, Yolande d'Aragon, The Prince, Fortune's Five Color, Huntington Pink Tea, Pat Austin, Cornelia, Cl. Devoniensis, Mme. Pierre Oger, Cramoisi Superieur, probably several others I'm forgetting at the moment. Several clematis -- Gillian Blades, HF Young, I think Asao still has a bloom, Nelly Moser, Polish Spirit, Daniel Deronda, Rouge Cardinal, Little Duckling, probably one or two others I'm forgetting. Several hardy geraniums -- Brookside, Johnson's Blue, Samobor, Mourning Widow, sanguineum, Splish Splash, maculatum, maccrorhizum, others I'm forgetting. assorted stuff -- Amsonia montana (not the other amsonias yet), mayapple, brunneras (Langtrees and Dawson's White), Penstemon hirsutus, impatiens, scented geraniums, violas all the heck all over the place, one or two daffodils still hanging in there, Oxalis vulcanicola 'Zinfandel', an unnamed coral bells, Marguerite daisies, African daisies, Lewisia, a coral honeysuckle whose name I can't remember at the moment, Earl of Essex and unnamed iris, I think the roof iris is already gone, verbena 'Homestead Purple' and 'Lanai', just starting to get blooms on salvias, lily of the valley, several varieties of columbine including canadensis and Black Barlow, one or two azaleas still hanging on, "Alexandria" alpine strawberries, probably lots of other stuff that I'm missing! Sharon -- my hardy glads are quite tall already, and things are usually late in my yard (too much shade!). Sissy -- I'm jealous of your poppies. I LOVE poppies, but I can't ever get them to do anything useful in my yard!

Well, whether or not they come back l plan on buying about 6 new Cardinal flowers at the upcoming native plant sale, and judging from last year there should be an abundance of L. siphiticas emerging in the garden this year. It's good to roll with what's going on and keep enjoying the marvelous things happening in the plant world. There are a lot of really cool plants that don't have any problem coming back. I had a Dutchmans Briches plant pop up where none were ever planted and I'm thinking it came from a seed that was decades old from a time when they grew in my neighborhood before it was "developed". You are all beautiful!!!!! For Milo and Sudan!!!!!!!