I've always wanted a compost bin, and although this is on the small side, the worms are supposed to speed the chemical breakdown of the food waste into dirt much faster than plain composting. Our dirt here is like clay dust. Grey and dry. No rain since we've been here. That's four months without rain. My son reminds me that we had a sprinkle, but it was about 10 drops. I don't know how anything stays green. The ground is compacted and doesn't seem to have any nutrients, although the rosemary and lavender are growing well in the front yard. Even the succulents seem to be wilting.
Since we don't have guinea pigs and rabbits to eat our scraps anymore, I'm glad to have a productive place to put my food waste. Do you think worms mind the mold? This is one of those questions I can't seem to find the answer to on the internet. I stir the dirt up every couple of days.
These guys are almost as cute as guinea pigs, don't you think? I think they are growing.
In a few months I'll see if I can mix some dirt in the raised beds that now just have a few anemic looking geraniums in them and see if I can grow vegetables.
Can I convince the kids these are pets? At least as much fun as a guinea pig or parakeet? Look you can hold and pet them. And you don't have to clean their cage!
Behold. We did have enough moisture in the sky a few days ago to produce a rainbow, albeit a rather pale one compared to our vivid, nearly daily rainbows in Guam. Perhaps it is God's promise to SEND rain this time. I'd like to close with some thoughtful metaphor about how God is in the dirty things of the world like sinners and worms, but I don't have time to be thoughtful about it. I need to go feed my worms.
7 comments:
veeerrrrmmmiiiiiiiccccuuullttturee
I think of you as I coddle my worms.
Welcome to California :-( where we feel lucky if we go only four months without rain. Too bad you had to settle here in what appears will be a drought year.
Some plants stay green through the summer because they are suited to a climate where they get their water in the winter. And of course some are green because we irrigate, irrigate, irrigate...
I'm learning to water! But my watering is tempered by the price of our water bill. This is the first place we've lived where our water bill is more than our electric and gas combined!
I always wanted to compost, too, so this interests me. But what especially interests me is that we have a rabbit, and it never occurred to me to give it food scraps! Just vegetables? What about egg shells, coffee grounds, and orange peels?
Margaret - Our rabbits ate veggies and fruit, but not the egg shells, grounds or orange peels. I don't know if you remember I had a pile in the back of our shed in Virginia were I dumped food waste like grounds and shells. It wasn't a compost bin, but a pile that started initially as yard waste, waiting to be bagged. If I kept it covered with leaves it didn't get too many flies. Occasionally I'd shovel it over and move some to other parts of the yard - like in the front where we dug out the old photinia and put in camellias.
I did something similar when we first moved to our house, but the raccoons uncovered the scraps and dragged them around the yard.
I think Napoleon Bunnypart is going to have an enriched diet from now on!
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