jeanner, for a town with a population of 5,700 the volunteer count was amazing! We have UMM here, a branch of the University of MN (UMM was voted one of the top 10 liberal arts colleges in the US!), and a great community of civic minded folks. MN DOT provided a grant for the trees based on how many volunteers we could round up to plant them, so the call went out and we were AMAZED by the response. More than 190 people came forward, 4-H, garden clubs, FFA, boy and girl scouts, etc. Unfortunatly, MN Dot has some pretty different ideas - each hole had to be 60" (that's right 60"!) wide and 15" deep, no sod back in the holes, 1/2 compost, 1/2 dirt, then mulch (which we aborted due to the rain - might have to go back and add more dirt if they sunk - we'll mulch them later this week). It rained so hard the holes were filling with water, NO FUN digging when the slop sticks to every shoveful! So they were real troopers! Brenda, burr oak, Triumph elm (a new disease resistant kind), Siouxland poplar, seedless honey locust, silver maple, hackberry, Austrian pine, and Japanese tree lilac. (whew)! Tonight as I drove home from work after a 9 hour day, there was my sister and her SO and 4 others, planting the remaining trees and cleaning up piles of sod etc, my heart went out to her - wish I could help more! They put out another call for volunteers that couldn't help Saturday to help finish. And we had gusts of wind at 50 mph+ on Sunday so they need to stake a bunch of them... (Thanks for your questions about my health, I'll answer on 'the good, the bad, and the ugly thread' - it's been a two week nightmare)

Mario, it's a dark and overcast day here so the pictures are not very nice. And for the first one I had to use the flash on a low setting to get something showing up! That one is grown in a real low light postion and after flowering it should have almost plain green leaves with the most intense blue in the centre: And this one gets a reasonable amount of light, will get more and even some sun in summer and should get some nice colour in its leaves befor starting to flower: And this one is grown in almost all day sun and is exposed to a lot of wind. During summer, the leaves should turn almost black and it should actually get some sunburn and that will show up as green splashes in the leaves: I should have a picture of a flowering one that was grown in full shade. I will look for it.

Lots of very pretty daylilies and that butterfly shot is wonderful. So pretty! I love that shot of the African Plum threesome. They look like they have lined up their faces together and are looking out over the garden. That is my favorite today.

Beth, If you want to have a Three Sisters garden but need for the corn to be sweet corn instead of a field, dent or ornamental corn, then all you have to do is switch to a half-runner type of bean or substitute a good bush-type cowpea like Pink Eye Purple Hull. From what I can tell, Pinkeye Purplehull peas with no support seldom get taller than maybe 20-30" tall in my garden, but they'll sneak across the pathway and climb 6' tall tomato cages if they have the chance. Still, the Pinkeye Purplehull peas are not as lush and heavy as many pole beans. Half-runner beans also shouldn't get tall enough to bring down the stalks of most sweet corn varieties. I have grown sweet corn in my Three Sisters beds but it is harder than it sounds. I only do it because I am stubborn and want to do what I want to do in the way I want to do it. : ) If you grow sweet corn and have beans climbing it and squash vines running through it, you have to be very, very, very careful when you are picking your ripe ears of corn. Often the bean plants will be wrapped around the ears, so you have to remove the ears without breaking the bean vines and you have to place your feet carefully as you harvest the corn (and, later on, the beans) or you'll step on and break your squash vines. In my garden, the huge advantage of the Three Sisters garden used with sweet corn is that the big winter squash vines often keep the raccoons from getting our sweet corn. Back in the day when the native Americans planted their Three Sisters gardens, they were raising crops to get them through the winter and their corn and beans normally were left on the plant until they dried so there was no issue with harvesting corn in the sweet (milk) stage or beans for use as green snap or shell beans. About a decade ago, give or take a couple of years, I read an amazing book called "Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden" in which Buffalo Bird Woman described for historians how her Hidatsa tribe and her specific family raised their crops in the 1800s and early 1900s. The book is available at various online booksellers, but it also is posted online and you probably would really enjoy reading it. Buffalo Bird Woman not only described how they raised their crops but also how they preserved them. It is one of my favorite all-time gardening books although it is not, strictly speaking, a how-to book. I've linked the online version for you. Dawn Here is a link that might be useful: Buffalo Bird Woman's Garden