Nasturtiums, cucumbers, and basil are up too. The transplanted basil doesn’t seem to be doing well though.
The transplanted lettuce is almost ready to eat! Unfortunately I don’t know if it’s a cut and come again variety. It’s supposedly a Little Gem variety, but people have different opinions on whether it should be harvested all at once, or a few leaves at a time.
My SFG is at my in-laws’ house, since our townhouse doesn’t have anywhere to grow on, and the maple trees nearby shade our deck quite nicely. My father in law is already talking about expanding the raised beds, and he hasn’t even tasted the tomatoes yet! He mentioned that we should add more beds, and that got me thinking about how I can do it cheaper next year. The less grass he has to cut in the backyard, the better. As long as I don’t grow any more beets, he’ll be happy.
I’m planning to try lasagna gardening, because filling the beds with purchased soil was very expensive. My sister has some big trees in her yard, and she’s more than happy to give me bags of them to use for mulch and compost. I hope to have the frames put together by August so I can put the cardboard down while it’s still dry, and I don’t have to deal with taking soggy cardboard from the recycling depot. The compost bin should have some good compost by then, and I’ll mix in the vermiculite, Sea Soil, and peat moss at that point as well. I’ll hit up Starbucks to get some grounds too. In October I’ll get the leaves and build the pile. Hopefully it will be ready by the early spring. If not, I’ll save those squares for planting in May.
There won’t be any trellises on these beds because they’ll be in front of the existing beds, but there are plenty of things that I want to grow that don’t need trellises: summer and winter squash, potatoes, and various herbs. Then in the fall, I’m going to do a big planting of garlic.
The weather has been pretty good for the past week, we got some big dumps of rain, then lots of hot weather. I’m very pleased with the progress of the garden so far. The beets, radishes, onions and beans are all sprouting. It looks like the tomato square is getting the most sunshine, as the radish leaves are about 50% than the other two squares.
I’m worried about the seeds that I planted for the carrots and lettuce. Those were from old seed packets, so I hope they were still viable.
I don’t have trellises up yet, but with the beans sprouting already, I think I’ll have to get going soon!
Good news for people hosting with Amazon S3, wanting to do authenticated accesses:
Amazon Web Services Developer Connection : Improvements: Virtual Hosted Buckets and Object Size
The Amazon S3 team is excited to launch a significant enhancement to our virtual hosted buckets feature (also known as vanity domains). Customers who use vanity domains can now make signed HTTP requests against their vanity domains. Please refer to the updated Amazon S3 documentation for details. We’ve released updated code samples for this feature which are available in the Resource Center.
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#5 Road in Richmond was nominated for the Seven Wonders of Canada. Interesting choice, I guess they had too many natural wonders. 
CBC.CA - Seven Wonders of Canada - Your Nominations - Number 5 Road, British Columbia
We received hundreds of nominations that spoke to the spirit of multiculturalism and co-operation in Canada. Whether for a French Immersion school that preserved both official languages, the world’s longest unguarded border, an ultra cooperative merge lane on the Lions Gate Bridge, the diversity of Kensington Market or, as in this nomination, a strip of road in Richmond BC that represents the multi-faith community in that area, it’s clear that Canadians do mostly “just get along.” Maybe this fact is a wonder in itself!
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While Tracy was having Mothers’ Day tea, I finished the seed planting, and attached the copper tape to the sides of the boxes with roofing nails. Hopefully the dissimilar metals won’t corrode the tape. It’s been a while since I’ve taken a chemistry class. 
Now the trellises need to be installed, but the even the transplants won’t need them for a few weeks, I hope. It’s my first time growing cucumbers, so I bought 3 seedlings, and one seed packet.
HARFORD _ Alex and Tracy are thrilled to announce the birth of their first child, Matthew Preston Harford on April 18th 2007, at 8:05 pm, weighing 8lbs 6oz. Welcomed with love by very proud grandparents Anita and Ward Tetreau and Ken and Dianne Harford. A big thanks to Dr Buie and to all staff at RCH.
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Wow, it has been a super busy few days with the garden. So far, I have:
Tomorrow, the rest of the seeds get planted.
I’ve been playing with Python and PHP to track radio station playlists, and noticed something interesting. Let’s compare the popular songs for the Beat (CFBT) vs the Zone (CJZN).
The Beat’s Results:
The Zone’s Results.
The Zone has 611 songs played in that period. A good mix of music. Compare it to the Beat’s 358, that’s just pitiful. The most popular song was played 84 times on the Beat, that’s 12 times per day.
I’m not saying that the Beat’s music sucks, they’re a good station to jump to when my favourites are running ads or playing a song that I don’t like. The problem is that they play the same stuff, over and over again. There are a lot of good independant Canadian hip-hop artists out there, so why doesn’t the Beat try to promote them, instead of filling their Can-con requirements with Nelly Furtado ten times a day?