Compost!

So life has been so full of adventure blogging hasn't been a big priority!

A few weekends ago it was time to work on the garden and prepare for winter. It was time to take down the compost pile and rebuild it. I hoped there was some good stuff in the bottom and there were some big holes between layers of bigger stuff.

As I took it apart, I started to be sad that I didn't have something that looked like beautiful compost that you see from Martha Stewart or other gardening guru. Then I realized, that I was messing with dirt that was not identifiable beyond dirt.

Really, how cool is it that we throw carrot peels, potato peels, pepper innards, apple cores, cantaloupes rinds and other fruit and vegetable scraps in the garden every few days. Then, on an October day I dump out the pile and almost nothing is recognizable except some egg shells and avocado pits. So, my compost is not perfect looking, but I do have something to amend my soil with! I transported at least 15 gallons of stuff to other parts of the garden. That's 15 gallons of stuff that I didn't have to buy!

As a kid my mom composted and I thought it was pretty silly, but I do appreciate it so much more now. My husband is always looking for some type of gadget to make compost faster but I tend to be pretty content with my round mesh bin and dumping it in the spring and fall to get the good stuff from the bottom. The automatic composter died and was taken apart the same day that I pulled the compost bin apart.

As an aside, I found lots of little pieces of concrete in my compost pile. I was perplexed about where those came from...we finally determined that they were from fireworks. We burned all of the cardboard from our 4th of July fireworks and put the ashes in the compost. I guess they put some small plugs in fireworks to keep them weighted so the bases stay put!