PlantCam

BestBuy carries this baby for $70
Watch your plants grow in fast-forward with the new Timelapse PlantCam garden camera. The PlantCam is rugged and weatherproof, and automatically takes photos and videos at set time intervals. It then stitches the photos together to create a video showing in minutes or seconds what usually can't be seen with the naked eye. The result is a seamless movie of your plants growing!
To create a timelapse movie, simply set the camera to take still photos at the desired time interval—immediately, 30 seconds, 1 minute, 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 3 hours, 6 hours, or once a day. It will automatically turn on after each interval countdown, take a photo, then return to battery conservation mode. After you are finished taking photos in timelapse mode, simply set the camera to "Convert to Movie" and it does the work for you!
INcredible!!
Precious...I wants one!!

These are my raised beds

UPDATE, June 16, 2011
My experiment with raised beds was so much fun and successful last year that I had to amend and expand.

In 2010 I propped up old pieces of wood and tilled and filled 5 raised beds at ground level. Also, last winter I cleaned the horse stalls and covered all beds with stall waste, up through April. Right now I have the 5 beds from last year:
--3 x 6 salad bed

Amendments:
I dug 1 spades-worth deeper, replaced the soil, and planted with lettuce, radishes and kohrabi, then surrounded with onion sets, which were offset planted.

OLD GARDEN

I had FOREST of okra in this bed in 2010.
--3 x 12 Northmost bed
Amendments:
I tilled the stall waste, then used my spade to dig about a spade's worth deeper, then mixed the two. I planted with okra, brussel sprouts and spinach.
Order S to N: Okra, brussel sprouts, okra, spinach, okra. I threw in marigold seeds to help fill. I planted two Jalepeno peppers, one at each end.

--1 1/2 x 12 north to south along-the-fence bed

Here is the same bed in 2010.
Amendments:
I tilled the stall waste, then used my spade to dig about a spade's worth deeper, then mixed the two. I planted scarlet runner beans along the fenceline. I also planted grocery store bought sweet potatoes--seemed to have missed the garden store ones, somehow =/ --just to the east of the beans, then I planted some leftover potatoes that had grown masses of roots and WANTED TO LIVE!! This bed also got 2 Jalepeno pepper plants. This is what it looked like early in 2010 before the cucumbers died. =(

--3 x 12 NEXT Northern Bed

I grew beets in this bed last year.
Amendments:
I tilled the stall waste, then used my spade to dig about a spade's worth deeper, then mixed the two. I planted 7 sweet peppers that I bought. I also put in 2 rows of sweet peppers, and threw in some marigold seeds. Again, this bed got 2 Jalepeno plants.

--3 x 12 Third Northern Bed

...more okra forest in 2010
SOOOOO many volunteer tomato plants this year. I removed them from another bed (more about that below...), and stagger planted 3 rows of 14 tomato plants, all very leafed out, several with flowers already.
MORE in "These are my raised beds, part II"

Year of Duck Gardening

NOW I have a desire to blog!! Although I L O V E D back yard chickens, The Easy Garden, and the other linked forums, I sadly had to drop them cold turkey. Some nasty hacker hit them with a virus last Fall. The first time my computer (and MANY other member's computers) crashed. 3 weeks later it happened again. Don't know whether it was an ineffective firewall, or, a virulent strain, I couldn't justify a third crash.
I joined Facebook--"Friend-Face" to me. It's been okay, but I REALLY miss my forum friends. (I also find the everyday posts work like a sleeping pill on me.)
After my middle daughter got married in early April, I launched into heavy duty GARDENING!!
...more in my next post! =D