@ersmith6 - Doug B is an excellent source of advice, he is close to your climate zone, and will have a better sense of what will do well and what won't. If you are in zone 7, be skeptical of advice from us in zone 5 or 4 and be skeptical of wintering advice from people in warmer zones. Reason is that each zone poses unique problems with wintering trees. So pick Doug B's brain on what he would do. If any of your tree are used as landscape plants in your area and areas north of your zone, that is a sign it might be possible to just keep them on the bench or on the ground. I would set them in a spot sheltered from winter sun, and wind. You put them in the shade to slow or prevent freeze - thaw cycling. Trees like to freeze, and stay frozen, to cycle daily between freeze at night and thaw in the sun is really rough on a tree. In the shade you will have less of this. Talk with Doug, attend a local meeting, ask locals what they do.
I know pomegranate can survive cold down into the middle 20's, but I am not sure how cold you get. My pomegranates in zone 5 are left out until frost knocks the leaves off, then put in a cold unheated well house, where temps stay above 32 F and usually below 40 F. Often in late winter, way too early to put outside, it will start to grow. I move it to my light garden set up for orchids. Growth indoors is weak, & leggy due to insufficient light, but when the ground is cold it is usually only a few weeks early, then it goes outside. If it wakes up unusually early, and spends too much time in the light garden, when I put it outside, I cut off all the spindly growth that occurred indoors, and let it re-bud out and start with a "second spring flush". If the tree was healthy going into storage, this is not a problem.
For non-north american readers, in the USA panther is another name for mountain lion also call a cougar. It is an entirely different species than the South Asian and African panthers and leopards. They run about 125 to 175 pounds of vicious fury. A big cat that can not be domesticated, somewhat more dangerous than the lion. Especially 2nd and 3rd year male cougars will wander thousands of miles before establishing territory and settling down. Cougar sightings have come in from the entire midwest off and on over the years. Their population is coming back up from the low populations of the 1950's & 1960's. They are expanding again into the former native range. We also have 2 other big cats, extremely rare in the US-Mexico border regions of New Mexico we have Jaguar, and somewhere else along the same border we have Ocelot.
Wolves, I know the upper peninsula of Michigan has a healthy population, didn't know they made it into the lower peninsula, but its cool that they did.
Sasquatch - I know Sasquatch, I married her daughter.
Not really, I only dated her, actually never did get married. I ran away just in time.
