> My fig trees died over the winter
Well, hell. I'm in a much balmier clime than Michigan and it is well known here you have to be an Old Italian with a whole roll of tarpaper to grow fig trees. We mulch and wrap with sheets and burlap, top with a metal bucket (plastic seems toxic to figs), and this winter we lost most of the main root/trunk, it is hanging-on by two branches which seem to have rooted where they touch dirt.
> brought inside to weather the winter
Ah. Well, our midget Orange Tree comes in every winter, and this winter on the sun-porch with a heat-pad under the pot. This thing has limped along since the early 1970s. But this winter it seems to have died-back to a few inches up from the pot. All the leaves fell off, but a few shoots are coming out.... we shall see.
The orange bore bitter fruit once, not in many years. The fig usually sets some green pods the size of a #47 lamp, which fall off.
The Hardy Kiwi just won't quit growing, has to be whacked-back almost weekly in the summer, but has never set fruit.
We have a tame Locust Tree which grew-up like an Atlas rocket, but already has a rot-spot on the base which dooms it. Meanwhile back at the fence we took-out an ill pine and all the little wild locust-weeds around it, and the weeds grew-up 13 feet in 2 years. Can't eat it, but if you can let it grow 50-100 years and find a saw which will cut it (green! seasoned Locust is almost saw/drill-proof) you have fine foundation logs.
Grass has gone nuts. If I didn't mow it yesterday, it needs it again already. Meanwhile my neighbor has (finally) done something about his dandelion farm (I didn't know you could buy Arsenic in a bottle with 2,4D) and we may really have "a lawn" this year.