Compost, Part III

Last fall I walked you through putting my compost pile to bed for the winter. This Saturday it was nice and warm, so I decided to open it up and see what happened.

Over the winter time we added kitchen scraps, chicken bedding and rabbit manure. We just dumped that stuff on top, we didn’t stir the pile at all.

Here is our pile before I opened things up.


When I started to dig through I found a lot of worms. Which are wonderful, worms will eat the decaying organic matter and turn it into wonderful worm casings. Worm casings are fabulously wonderful for the garden.

And here is the final produce. That big pile of leaves, straw, manure and garden waste is now a huge pile of nice, nutrient rich compost. No matter how many times I have seen this, it always amazes me, I am kind of a nerd that way.

Which will help me grow produce full of vitamins, mineral and enzymes.

Meadowlark

Yesterday as I was hanging laundry I was being kept company by two or three Meadowlarks singing in the hills above my house. I love listening to those Meadowlarks. It seems like they always come to me on those soft spring mornings when the earth smells damp and new, and the breeze is warm on my skin. The Meadowlarks remind me of someone, someone I never even knew, she passed away several years before I met her grandson, my husband. The first spring we lived in our house my husband’s parents were here visiting and the Meadowlarks were singing like crazy. My Mother-in-law stopped to listen and they went on to tell us that the small town she grew up in was named “Lark” after the Meadowlark and that her Mother always loved to listen to the birds sing. She went on to say that her Mother always told her that the birds were singing a special song that went like this: “Lark is a pretty little town…” over and over. Every time I hear the Meadowlark sing I can’t help but repeat those words in my mind “Lark is a pretty little town.” A year or so ago those words changed when I told my youngest daughter “Do you hear the birds singing to you? They are saying ‘Emma is a pretty little girl’”. She smiled, and I remembered a woman I never knew.

To here a Meadowlark sing go here.

12 Reasons I Love My Clothesline

1. Quietly hanging up clothes in the warm spring air.
2. Saving about a dollar a day in electricity

3. The smell of freshly dried clothes and sheets!
(On a nice hot day, I can get all my laundry washed and dried using my clothes line, usually by the time a new load is ready to hang the old load is dry. My line can hold about three loads of laundry)

4. The clothes are less wrinkly

5. Clothes don’t shrink.

6. My whites are very white, without Clorox.

(levis go on the line first thing in the morning, they take the longest to dry)

7. Sunshine is a natural “anti-bacterial”

8. On a warm day in the summertime my clothes dry faster on the line than in my 800$ fancy shamncy dryer. For FREE!

(Dadzoo’s new white shirt)

9. I love to look at my little girls dresses, skirts and nightgowns dancing in the wind.

10. It makes me laugh when my 3 year old boy pretends that the clothes pins are “monsters”

(Punk#5 is a winner for staining his little undershirts, an afternoon in the sun, and the stains are gone!)

11. I think it is funny when people give me odd looks when they find out I use a clothes line. It use to bug me, but I got over it.

12. It makes me feel self sufficient.

(Overlapping clothes saves on the amount of pins that are needed)

I’ll Walk With You

“Mom, I am taking Tom up into the mountains.” said my 11 year old.

“Okay,” I say, “But be careful and watch him close.”

I didn’t need to worry, Punk #1 is a wonderful sister to her baby brother, as was evidenced when I watched her help him down the hill.


(pause, smile for the camera)