We now have vegetables in our garden! We have two beds, each about 6foot by 10foot.
I have been learning about composting and discovered that used coffee grounds are a good mulching material and addendum to soil. The article I got most of my information from Starbucks “Grounds for your Garden” . Starbucks offers free one gallon bags of used coffee and espresso grounds. In Grand Forks, the Starbucks I visited places these out front for people to pick up. I also picked up grounds from my favorite local coffee house, Porpoura Coffee House, Grand Forks, ND. Our soil is clay rich — the coffee grounds cause the soil not to clump as easily, making it more permeable. Grounds are also carbon rich, contain some fixed nitrogen, and sulfur.
We also picked up six dozen (72) earth worms from Cabela’s, East Grand Forks, MN.
Coffee grounds are not as acidic as coffee. Also, earthworms love coffee grounds — and slugs hate them! This is pretty cool.
We decided to mix coffee and soil in a 1:2 ratio in a five gallon pale and then add two dozen worms. Three pales of addendum were made this way, one for each garden bed. For the butterfly garden, we churned up the dirt in between the flowers we planted on Saturday and spread the coffee/dirt/worms over the bed. For the vegetable garden we dug several trenches and filled these with the coffee/dirt/worm mix.
The vegetable garden, so far, has a row of carrots; two rows of alternating kohlrabi, eggplant and pepper; three small size tomato plants (Sweet Million, Japanese Golden Pair, Grape); and a row of mixed peas and beans. We also sprinkled basil, parsley and cilantro seeds between the plants. The idea here is to have the small herb plants displace potential weeds. These herbs also deter insects. We alternated the kohlrabi, eggplant and pepper in order to increase the diversity of these rows. Here is a good list of plant families: Canadian Country Woman. Well, we will see if any of this works by the end of the summer 
Here are the latest pictures:
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Garden 2009: Update 5-24-2009
Garden 2009: Planning stages…
Happy Mothers Day! to all Mothers past, present and future.
Today we went to All Seasons — we are getting pretty excited about this garden. My oldest son spent a few hours last week measuring the positions and sizes of all immovable features of property. Tonight, he and I set about creating a computer model of our property using Google Sketch-up. We gave the model enough detail to look neat without overloading our computer too much. All this model has to do is give us a rough idea of what different arrangements of raised beds, trees and shrubs will look like. So here it is, showing only those things we do not intend to move. Our next post will hopefully show the plan we decide on.
Map, West -->
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Looking North West
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Looking South West from the ground. This creepy looking guy has been stairing at our fence ever since we moved in. 
Photo gallery trick with Picasa
I am still very new to HTML, CSS, scripts etc…
So to start off I decided to find a simple template and modify it. This is how my website, veryhelpful.info/Blaise.Mibeck came into exisitance; I used the Zenlike1.0 Template by Node Thirty Three. I am very grateful to them.
For anything fancy I would search for “insert description of fancy thing” plus “html code” and see what solutions came up.
This has gotten me a long way rather quickly except for photo galleries. I am able to find photo gallery templates all right — but getting them to work with my photos was practically impossible for me. Ease of use is a big concern due to time limitations. Until now my solution was to make a table of thumbnail images — this would look more or less ok most of the time.
The solution was sitting on my computer. I am a fan of Picasa and it never ceases to amaze me.
1. Edit and select pictures,
2. Pull down the [Folder] menu,
3. Select [Export as HTML page...]
That simple! It all ends up in a hermetically sealed file. The HTML can then be tweaked and modified; for instance, by including the type of license I have decided on for the use and credit of the images.
Crash course on using Dasher.
First, go to the Dasher Online Demo. If your connection is slow, you might want to download the software and install it. even if your connection is fast the online demo can get sluggish a bit. The demo is mainly for the curious.
Step 1: Clicking stops and starts Dasher. The red line is the vector. The speed is controlled by controlling the length, the direction by changing the angle of the vactor.
Step 1
Step 2: “Drive” the vector towards the letter you want next. When you get closer to a letter it increases in size. Like magic, Dasher predicts the next letters you may be looking for and also spaces. Just go with the flow, think about what you are trying to write and let Dasher do the work.
Step 2
Step 3: When you get to a word that isn’t in Dashers dictionary, you might have some trouble. Just Dasher will do its best to help you but will also stay out of your way. I believe after using an unusual word once, Dasher adds it to the list so that prediction improves later on.
Step 3
Step 4: You will notice colors are helpful in Dasher. When you need a comma, period of other puctuation, aim for green. When you need a capital aim for yellow. For everything else colors just make it easier to distinguish what you are aiming for.
Step 4
Conclusion: The guy who came up with the idea for Dasher is a freak’in genius! His name is David MacKay. The group of people who made Dasher what it is today are also very awesome.
Dasher: Text entry by mouse, joystick and other non-keyboard devices - permanent link">Dasher: Text entry by mouse, joystick and other non-keyboard devices
Dasher
A very cool project –Dasher is a free text input program that uses a pointing device interface. I discovered this when my arthritis was at its worst and I began searching for anything that could help me.
It works like this: You control the speed by lengthening the pointer vector. You drive the vector towards the letter you want next. When you hit that letter you will see certain letter enlarge based on what dasher thinks you will need next.
It takes 30 minutes to learn Dasher. When I did learn it, I could enter text faster than typing.
Dasher is mainly for assisting physically disabled people interact with computers; this, in turn, helps them interact with the rest of us. In these applications the text can be fed directly into Text to Speech software (Text2Speech, T2S) giving these people the ability to talk!
There are joystick devices for people to control with their heads or whatever hand control they happen to have. There are also eye movement trackers; using special glasses and your eyeball you can control the pointer in Dasher. Imagine talking with your eyeball!
The people who developed Dasher could be charging for this software — but they don’t. They want people who need it to have it.
People who don’t need it should try it. Solidarity with the physically disabled — Dasher gives them an ability we take for granted. It is a good thing to see how others live.
I don’t need Dasher to input text. Even though I have only used a mouse to write with Dasher and my arthritis doesn’t actually bother my typing ability, I believe I have a better understanding and respect for people who do things despite disabilities. I also appreciate keyboard typing - I don’t take it for granted.
Try it!Dasher Java demo It’s actually pretty fun! Makes writing on a computer a kind of video game experience. Peace to all my disabled brothers and sisters — you are awesome!