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
Mibeckland Garden 2009: Butterfly garden started!
On Friday night we ordered dirt from Jet’s Black Dirt and Road Gravel (John Lutheran Jr., Owner/Operator). He delivered three yards the next morning — he is prompt and reliable. Before ordering from Jet’s Black Dirt, I shopped around for dirt delivery and spoke with three other businesses. Jet’s Black Dirt was the best deal in town. I highly recommend him.
We built another butterfly garden box, tilled around the base of the previous box and filled each up with dirt. We also tilled around the front of the house. We lined the tilled ground with Suncast Lawn Edging (USA made, recycled plastic). You can get a similar Suncast product here: Suncast Composite Edging
Here is a list of the Butterfly Garden plants we planted today. Latin name is followed by common names:
Rudbeckia fulgida, (Black-eyed Susan, Brilliant Coneflower, Eastern Coneflower, or Orange Coneflower) Anethum graveolens, Dill Bandana Pink Lantana Asclepias speciosa, (Showy Milkweed) Asclepias incarnata, (Swamp Milkweed, Rose Milkweed, Swamp Silkweed, and White Indian Hemp) Echinacea purpurea, (Eastern Purple Coneflower) Heliotropium arborescens, (Marine Heliotrope, Garden Heliotrope) Verbena bonariensis, (Purpletop Vervain, Tall Verbena, Clustertop Vervain, or Pretty Verbena) Not sure, verbena x hybrida? (Label says: Quartz Merlot Mix) Aster x dumosus, (Woods Blue, Hardy Aster) Tropaeolum majus (Garden Nasturtium, Indian Cress or Monks Cress) side note: Nasturtium literally “nose-twister” or “nose-tweaker”.
Tomorrow we plant the vegetables! The dirt has all been used up. And now pictures of the butterfly garden:
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!