Gardening

About three weeks ago, I bought and planted some cucmbers, corn, and onions. I've done some moving around and now the plants are arranged as follows:

• Planter
  • Cucumber x2
    
    • Planted about a week before [2025-04-07 Mon]

  • Onion
    

    • Planted about a week before [2025-04-07 Mon]

    The onions have been through a lot. I originally plante them in three small flower pots. I'm not sure why I did that; I knew that those pots were too small to grow an onion in, but I did it anyway. A couple of days later, Kallie came and knocked them over and I had to scoop them up and put them back in the pots. Several days passed and nothing sprouted, so I stopped watering them.

    Several days after that, after I had planted the other plants, THEY SPROUTED! It felt like a miracle because I was sure they were dead.

    I then had to address the issue of the pot size. I figured that they would only get harder to move if I let them grow, so I took them out of their pots and moved them to the planter with the cucumbers.

    [2025-04-26 Sat] Nevermind, they died.

• Hanging Basket

  • Cucumber x2
    

    • Planted about a week before [2025-04-07 Mon]

    These have been my favorite of what I've planted because I think thye look cute in the hanging basket. Lately though their leaves have been withering. I asked Alexis and she said they might be getting too much sun, so I moved them away from the edge of the porch where they'll be shielded from the midday sun.

• Large Plastic Pots
  • Homestead Tomato x1
    
    • Planted on [2025-04-07 Mon]
  • Homestead Tomato x1
    
    • Planted on [2025-04-07 Mon]
  • Early Girl Tomato x1
    
    • Planted on [2025-04-07 Mon]
  • Corn x1
    
    • Planted on [2025-04-07 Mon]

  • Beets x2
    

    • Planted on [2025-04-07 Mon]

    I planted two beets in one pot. I think there'll be enough room, but I'm not certain.

[2025-04-26 Sat] Kallie dug up one of the tomato plants. I didn't have them labelled, so I don't know which one it was. I'll have to find out when they grow up and I can see if the two remaining plants look different from each other.

I wanted to keep the plants in the back yard because I think Kallie likes being out there with me while I water and weed the plants, but I moved all the pots to the front porch so that she couldn't eat any more of them. The planter and hanging basket are silll in the back yard, so she'll still get some of that though.

The latest thing I've been experimenting with in my computer has been using it without a window manager. I've been using Emacs a lot recently and the "use emacs for everything" meme got me thinking "do I really need anything else?".

The following code is the end of my .bashrc file. Before, it was a simple exec startx inside the test for TTY1 and I changed it to include a simple menu that asks me whether I want Spectrwm (my usual window manager), launch emacs fullscreen withouta WM, or just log into TTY1.

# startx function
if [[ -z $DISPLAY ]] && [[ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]]
then
    clear
    printf "Please Select Window Manager:\n"
    printf "0. None/tty\n"
    printf "1. EMacs\n"
    printf "2. Spectrwm\n\n"
    read wmchoice
    if [ $wmchoice == "emacs" ] || [ $wmchoice == "e" ] || [ $wmchoice == "E" ] || [ $wmchoice == "1" ]; then
        export XINITRC=.xinitrc_emacs
        exec startx -- vt1 -nocursor
      #exec emacs
    fi
    if [ $wmchoice == "spectrwm" ] || [ $wmchoice == "s" ] || [ $wmchoice == "S" ] || [ $wmchoice == "2" ]; then
        unset XINITRC
        exec startx
    fi
fi

This is the end of my regular .xinitrc file

exec emacs --daemon &
exec gentoo-pipewire-launcher &
exec dbus-launch --exit-with-session spectrwm

This is the end of my .xinitrc_emacs

exec emacs -mm

Like I said before, this just launches emacs fullscreen. I didn't know it before, but you can create xorg windows manually without a manager. This is the graphical version of emacs and nothing else. Interestingly, if you click a link in org mode, the link still opens in librewolf, my default browser, I just can't resize the window.

I've actually gone a step further, forgone xorg entirely, and started using emacs in an 8-color TTY. That's actually what I'm using to write this now. Using it this way has actually prompted me to make some changes to my emacs configuration/keybindings. Before, I was using the jkl; keys to navigate because it annoyed me that the (relatively) common hjkl navigation keys were one key off from where my fingers rest onn the home row. However, for some reason the linux TTY was not sending the control-semicolon keysym to emacs, so that key just didn't do anything. I could move the cursor left, but not right. To fix it, I've changed to using hjkl. I looked online to see if anyone had opted to use jkl; like me and found people arguing against it bacause hjkl puts the relatively more commonly used up-down keys under your index and middle finger. That's what really convinced me to switch, and after trying it for about a day, I gotta say that I agree. I could get used to this.

Alexis and I took a class at the Makerspace on [2025-04-24 Thu 19:00] for triconopoly, or "Viking Wire Weaving" and it was pretty cool! It's basically taking a single metal wire and weaving it into a chain (not sure if that's the right word) to form the band of a bracelet or necklace.