December 23, 2008

Well, I must say, being on vacation during all this white stuff has made me an expert at driving on snow.  I've certainly done enough of it.  That and my arms are still sore from all the shoveling.  Insane, and we're supposedly expected to recieve another 2-8 inches tonight and tomorrow.  I hate to jinx it, but I'm dreaming of a White Christmas...  It's been forever, if ever, that we've had one at my house.  I remember growing up that I'd long for a white Christmas, and never get one.  Sure I've said this already, but it's a big deal, so it bears repeating.

So, after running around looking for the last few items on my wife's shopping list to make all our family gifts again this year, I found I was slipping and sliding more than ever tonight.  Maybe it was because it was 33 degrees rather than in the 20s.  Not sure.  All I know is that I'm glad for shopping local.  I found all the hard-to-find items at our local stores.  Lemon Drops came from Bartels, and the white chocolate baker's chocolate came from our local independent grocery.  Pretty cool, I just had to comment.

Anyway, I promised a look at my compost bins.  I've only scraped the snow off of them once, after the first snow.  Since then I've not ventured out much, other than to take these pictures and play with the kids.



Couple of interesting points about the bins.  First off, we had over a foot of snow before this pic was taken.  Why is there only a few inches on top of my cover?  I can only think that it's due to the tree cover, though it's not a complete cover when all the leaves are off the pear tree.  Interesting.  I'm glad it didn't have a foot on it because 2x2s and corregated fiberglass wouldn't hold that much weight, for sure.  That's the second point, I'm happy that it is holding up so well, no sag in the middle or anything.  Pretty solid construction... not EG quality, but it's working.  And lastly, look at the right hand side.  I'm shocked that some creature hasn't made a home out of it.  That's the place I had planned on putting all the leaves for use as browns next year, but I didn't get nearly enough, so I just added them to the top of my pile.



Here's a glimps of my pile.  The wind blew in some snow throught he pallets, but when it melts it will just add some more moisture to the pile.  You can see that I have just been dumping my kitchen scraps on top, without any mixing.  Yeah, those are a ton of crackers.  My youngest got into the bag and spilled them all over the floor.  Not happy about it, but I wasn't going to let them eat off the floor.  So compost they became.

That reminds me.  Today was garbage night.  Supposedly we're getting collection tomorrow, but I'm not holding my breath.  Anyway, it was interesting.  They cut us down to a 20 gallon can (and increased the cost) this year.  I wasn't so concerned about that, but what I really got upset about was the alternating recycling and yard waste pickup.  With my compost I rarely have more than half a can (weeds) of yard waste, but we go through a ton of recycling.  We do our best to recycle everything we can, so that's always overflowing.  But the funny thing is that we almost never fill our tiny garbage can.  With our kitchen compost and recycling, we don't generate that much garbage.  In fact, after the youngest potty trains (soon I think), we will cut our garbage in half.  Yeah, I'm proud of being green, and that's not some fad, I've been working on it for a decade.

Well, time to go make Christmas cookies, double-dipped cherries and Key Lime fudge, etc. yummy.

Enjoy your garden.