Location, Location, Location

My friend Margaret and I have a continuing fig contest going on. Whose fig trees are the best? My trees produce really nice big, fat figs, but Margaret's tree makes up for it in quantity. Look what she picked in just one day! It probably helps that her house is about 7 miles southeast of mine. I don't know why, but the state department of argiculture map puts my neighborhood down in the southern tip of Stafford County in the Piedmont area, but the city of Fredericksburg just across the river is on the edge of the Tidewater. The couple of miles distance between my house and the other side of the river can mean 5 degrees in temperature. That probably translates into a few more days of growing season. My daughter's house in King George County only 25 mile away is definitiely in Tidewater Virginia. her growing season is two full weeks longer than mine. Life is not fair.
However, mulch can help a lot. last year I saved my bay laurel tree (zone 8) by putting tires around it and filling them with mulch. It came through the winter beautifully. Now I have to figure out how to keep a "hardy" (zone 8) oleander living through a zone 7 winter.