Hi Rob, How about my yard long beans, green or Red Noodle, Bitter Gourd-medicinal, Cotton, more from my list? for your Squash and Zinnia- as many pkts as you can share..plmk. thanks, happy swaps, Bea

hi robin - i read your GW member page, and wondered if you managed to meet your 2005 goal of selling tomatoes? if so, how'd it go? another MA transplant to carolina is heard from :) have you read the recent gardening in the carolinas thread, "not from here"? marsha

These are also available at the Friends of the Garden Calendar and include maps to event locations. Here is a link that might be useful: Seed Swap Event Details with Map and Directions.

Hi everyone, Very nice, Ellie, that your county provides compost bins to its residents. Wish ours did that instead of spend money to collect yard debris. Alana, I love the sound of your orange-flowered garden. Orange colored flowers are some of my favorites. Shirley, great GLOW photo of the hot air balloons. What a shot that captures the moment! Jeanne, I watched the College World Series, too. I yelled enough to make myself somewhat hoarse. OK, so I admit to being a very "animated" college sports fan when I get into games... Although I am a die-hard SEC fan, I confess I was pulling for my husband's alma mater, U of AZ. Only fair, since he dares not pull against LSU. As for the cormorant chicks - When we band, we place a band on each leg. One is a small metal band issued by the US Fish & Wildlife Service, Bird Banding Lab. The other is a plastic, colored band that can be read from a distance using binoculars or a spotting scope. Throughout the breeding season, we spend several days sitting in blinds, observing for banded birds that return to that colony. That enables us to get much more info other than through someone finding a dead banded bird and reporting it to the Bird Banding Lab. We can determine breeding site fidelity, survivorship, age structure, and other population demographics. Last year we re-spotted more than 400 unique bands at the 2 islands we conduct our observations on. Here is a "digiscoped" photo I took of one of the birds. As to why we do it at night - that is a matter of reducing disturbance as much as possible. All the birds are calmer at night, so we try to only go on the island when it is dark. That means banding all night long. It also means on observation days, we leave the boat dock at 3:00 am and don't leave the island until 9:00 pm. Makes for a long day, and you have to stay in your 5' x 7' blind for the duration (and that is why we bring a "honey bucket" with us). Hahaha. Happy gardening, Katie