It's my SFG. Yeah, you know: me.

Don’t think it looks like much? It’d look like a whole lot less if I hadn’t bought some seedlings from Plants of the Southwest.

Also, appearances notwithstanding, it’s set on (mostly) bare [...]]]> So this time my TracFone decided to email the picture I took a week ago:

It's my SFG. Yeah, you know: me.

Don’t think it looks like much? It’d look like a whole lot less if I hadn’t bought some seedlings from Plants of the Southwest.

Also, appearances notwithstanding, it’s set on (mostly) bare ground, not uneven cement. Granted, our clay soil often feels like cement. But the ground’s actually more khaki color. Which, I suppose, only makes sense.

So far all I can say is I probably need to water way more. The rain we’re getting right now ought to help in a major way. But everything’s alive, if not exactly shooting skyward. The Genovese Basil seems to thrive best, for some unknown reason.

I need to call and check out those 55-gallon drums – see what they were used for, see how many are available. Thanks again for the heads-up, Mike!

Tired now. More news soon.

Because even without being turned – i.e., aerated – the stuff in the bin smelled mostly like [...]]]> As you might imagine, I’ve been mighty dilatory about turning the old compost of late. So today I decided I’d get to it. I’m feeling better, and physical activity helps sharpen my mind. And something sure has to.

Because even without being turned – i.e., aerated – the stuff in the bin smelled mostly like nice, sweet soil, I figured it was time to screen it. Which of course is a somewhat arduous process.

So I was out about that for a while. And being me, I started to suffer doubts. Was I doing this right? Was it all right that the screened stuff – putatively compost itself – was moist when I put it in the finished-product bin? And I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of stuff that seemed mighty compost-y was sticking together in big clumps no matter how I munched it with my gloved hands or whacked it with a hoe. I’ve got too many twigs and branches in there, which show small sign of degrading in less than geological time, and they tend to hold the more dirt-like stuff together.

Then it came to me, like Boethius, to seek consolation in philosophy. After all, if I succeed totally and brilliantly, what do I wind up with? Dirt. Dirt deluxe, to be sure: premium quality dirt. But withal, dirt.

And if I fail utterly, what do I have? Well, dirt. If not such a high-toned variety of dirt.

Indeed, I thought, what are we but dirt rearranged? And in time, no matter what prodigies of plasticization we perform, at shocking expense, under the name “embalming,” we’ll eventually be sorted back into dirt.

At which point I realized philosophy was becoming more depressing than consoling, so I decided to pitch it back in amongst the organic fertilizer. It had served its purpose.

And of course I’m not failing. Indeed, I produced perhaps ten more pounds of nice, crumbly, dark soil-like substance which I can only presume is compost. Which is the point, yes?

I can’t say how efficiently I’m producing the stuff. No doubt I could do it better, which is to say, faster. In any event I’m not likely to become a world power in compost production any time soon. So?

It’s still gratifying. And I have compost!

Sadly, Emma, who was helping, doesn’t find this as entertaining as it might be. For one thing, being in a more mellow frame of mind this evening than is often the case I didn’t do much of the stamping and blaspheming which usually accompanies my forays into handymanhood. Indoors, of course, whenever I so much as look as if I’m going to pick up a tool she goes right into her pen. Whereas when she’s outside she seems comfortable lying sixty feet away laughing at me, apparently confident I’m too distant to conveniently destroy her. Not that I ever would destroy her, or even threaten to.

I’m not Squeak, after all.

I’d resigned myself to not having honeysuckle blossoms – with their attendant wonderful aroma – of my own this year. I was prepared to be content with the fact that both the honeysuckles I’ve got in the ground, the store-bought one and the one I coaxed into [...]]]> It’s not a cliché if it’s literally true, right?

I’d resigned myself to not having honeysuckle blossoms – with their attendant wonderful aroma – of my own this year. I was prepared to be content with the fact that both the honeysuckles I’ve got in the ground, the store-bought one and the one I coaxed into rooting myself from a clipping, seemed established and thriving. I had originally been going to buy one that already had flowers on it, but decided it didn’t look too healthy, and instead picked a more robust-appearing, but flowerless, plant.

Then Saturday afternoon I went out to check on the honeysuckles and discovered two yellow flowers toward the top of the storebought vine. They didn’t broadcast their smell very far, but they definitely had it – that honeysuckle scent I’ve longed for for such a long time.

It’s a big thing for me. I love the smell of honeysuckle; it’s probably my favorite scent. I’ve really wanted my own for years – the whole 21 years I’ve been in my house. I’ve tried in the past to grow them but despite the legendary hardiness of the plants mine died.

Now, having researched intently and done things right, mine grow. And I was rewarded with flowers. Flowers I never expected until next year. Yay!

I would’ve mentioned this earlier but I had no landline phone service over the weekend, hence no Internet. Fortunately, the repair guy arrived within two hours of my calling today and got me back in business. Of course this enables me to upset myself and waste my life online…

Speaking of which … I was looking at this Spanish-language blog on Agorism. I’m back to studying Spanish again, and as with the gardening (and, it pleases me to report, various other areas in my life) actually sticking it and making progress, however sporadic. Although my vocabulary isn’t huge, I read it pretty well; it’s my listening comprehension which lacks.

Anyway, I found an unfamiliar word, which wasn’t a great surprise. In Firefox I supposedly have a Spanish-English dictionary plug-in installed – which, unlike my English dictionary plug-in, I’ve never gotten to work. Anyway, in a transport of optimism, I highlighted the word and right-clicked it. Up came a context menu with an option to “translate.” This took me to a laundry list of choices – French to German, Japanese to English – and clicked on the “Spanish-English.” And up popped a definition in Babelfish!

Only … I wasn’t using Firefox. I was using Opera. Specifically the new 9.50, supposedly a significant upgrade.

Whoa! Did Opera do this before? I never realized it. I didn’t even have Javascript enabled (I usually use Opera to browse pages that don’t require Javascript and on which I mostly don’t care about graphics.) Anyway, this is great – exactly what I’ve been hoping for as an online language-learning adjunct. This’ll make it a lot easier to read articles in Spanish without totally losing my train of thought as I fumble through a dead-tree dictionary. Plus Babelfish handles different verb tenses (mostly; although it just choked on “tendrá.” Which I’m pretty sure means “will have,” but I wanted to check.)

So, cool. Now I can fritter my life away reading Spanish-language websites as well as English! Progress!

Oh – the shiny new Firefox 3.0 supposedly releases in a few hours. If the development team’s dreams of mass downloads are realized (allegedly 1.5 million users have vowed to DL the update on opening day) the Internet will slo-o-ow to a crawl. Or if, like me, you’re bound to it-for-dialup, an even greater and more aggravating crawl.

Personally, I plan to wait and see if any really picturesque or horrifying bugs have escaped beta testing before I DL. If you want to jump ahead on into the madness, though, go here.

And in the interests of fairness, you can snag Opera 9.50 here.

And if you don’t want to see really horrifying bugs, under no circumstances click here.

It’s supposed to get really windy later. That struck me as not ideal for planting a tender transplant. Then again, it’s gonna have to get used to our wind soon or late. Also I’ve been putting it off [...]]]> So today I decided, no more excuses, and went forth into the back yard to plant my honeysuckle.

It’s supposed to get really windy later. That struck me as not ideal for planting a tender transplant. Then again, it’s gonna have to get used to our wind soon or late. Also I’ve been putting it off already for, well, a year.

First I dug a hole by the wall to embed the fan-shaped wood trellis I bought from Mundo Wally for the purpose. There proved to be a sort of lip of foundation at the base of the cement-block north wall which served nicely to prop the base against. A small chunk of busted-up cement from something or other I’ve had to demolish since moving in helped wedge it in place from the other side.

At this point, as usual, Emma took my presence in the yard as meaning I wanted nothing more than to play with her. So nothing would answer but that I had to roam around the yard holding my arms out before me like Calvin playing Frankenstein’s Monster and making zombie noises. Which is how one plays the Puppy Monster. Emma happily raced around fleeing the Puppy Monster until she got tired and went to lie down in the shade. Fortunately it wasn’t too hot out there yet.

A few years ago I tried planting honeysuckle and it just flat died. This amazed all the people at local nurseries I asked about it, who unanimously said that honeysuckle’s so robust that if it didn’t have purty flowers it would be roundly hated as a weed. I did a little more research this time.

Hope it helps. Fingers crossed.

One key element is that the best books (primarily Judith Phillips’ excellent New Mexico Gardener’s Guide: Revised Edition) tell us that plants around here need loose soil to spread their roots, as well as a way to keep the soil cool and moist. The reason you see so many trees in public plantings around town that are sapling-sized after ten years or more in the ground (even when they’re green and show signs of being well-tended) is that they probably didn’t go in big enough holes to begin with; the soil around them was too compacted, largely by giant earth-moving machines; and that much of their rooting area is paved over, meaning it’s hot and impervious to water. The general advice Phillips gives for trees as well as shrubs and vines such as honeysuckle is to dig only to the depth of the root-ball, but to three or four times the width. So I took up my various tools (pick-axe, digging bar/tetsubo, shovel) and went to town.

To my surprise the soil proved none too hard to dig. I’m used, as I think I’ve mentioned, to it having the consistency of well-cured cement. Anyway, I dug so enthusiastically that in short order I’d produced a hole the requisite 32 inches in diameter or so, and over twice the necessary five inches deep. Whoops!

So I made a little platform of smallish dirt clods, reasoning that since root drainage is also an issue for honeysuckles in our heavy clay Valley soils it wouldn’t hurt to allow for a bit of that, as well as aeration. Anyway, as carefully as I could I transplanted my cherished honeysuckle sprout. I didn’t do as great a job as I might. One substantial shoot busted clean off. But I got the rest in place and wound the little shoots (or whatever the hell they’re called) tenderly in among the trellis to sort of get ‘em started.

Deciding it couldn’t actually hurt, I also stuck the base of the shoot that had broken off into the potting soil the rest was still in. That’s how I got the damned thing in the first place, although I actually kept the cutting in a glass of water until it rooted out (right after that I discovered you can get some kind of plant food to encourage cuttings to root: great.) Also Phillips recommends just “pinning slightly woody stems to moist soil in summer,” which seems, Jesus, pretty Draconian. In any event I’m not doing that to my baby, no sirree.

I filled the hole in again, being careful of course not to tamp the dirt down. I placed a double handful of the compost I made (yay!) directly around it for luck. Then I took the slightly pricey pecan hulls I bought at Osuna Nursery and mulched hell out of it.

At this point Emma came up to see what I was doing. Once she saw she couldn’t believe it. She looked up plaintively. “Dad, you’re introducing dried vegetable matter to our territory! For a plant. Hel-lo.”

And I said, “Yup. Guard it with your life.” Meaning primarily: if you dig or root or roll around with that thing, you’re a rug. Which of course is totally a lie. I’d never hurt her. Daddy’s special words might sure come out in force, though. I’d bet to that.

She went, “Whoa!” and went back to lie in the shade some more.

The transplant did not look too robust, I fear. Its tender little green leaves had wilted a bit, as if our awful soil had killed it on contact. I gave it a light misting and soaked the roots some, trying not to go overboard. Then I put the compost container next to it as a sort of windbreak (having second thoughts about the wind, there.) And thus ’twas done.

I certainly hope my little honeysuckle flourishes and grows. I’ve longed for honeysuckle of my own for years. And Gods know I nurtured this one long enough.

Even if it doesn’t, though, I’ve made a start. I dug a hole in the ground and put something in it. And whatever transpires with the honeysuckle, I will persevere. So there.

Update, 5:00 PM MDT – having occasion to venture into the backyard anyway (no, really) I yielded to temptation to go and check on my new planting, despite the fact it’s only been in the ground like 4-5 hours. To my pleased surprise both the transplant and the branch that broke off and I stuck in the ground anyway are both looking green and perky despite the wind.

Fingers double-crossed. No, wait; that didn’t come out right -

It’s just that today I was reminded of the tool’s excellence by the simple fact of using it to begin expunging the weeds from my front yard. It’s just great for that. It’ll [...]]]> I know that sounds like the beginning of a limerick. Sadly, that’s all there is and there ain’t no mo’.

It’s just that today I was reminded of the tool’s excellence by the simple fact of using it to begin expunging the weeds from my front yard. It’s just great for that. It’ll take the little bastards off level with the ground; sometimes it even hooks them and yanks ‘em out by the roots. Which is definitely bonus.

It’s about the only thing I know to get rid of the foul weeds locally called goatheads, shy of a flamethrower (which, granted, I so wish I had), or just grubbing the things out one by one by hand. Which, given the properties of our North Valley soil (the phrase “cement-like” springs to mind) would be a slow and brutal task. The monstrous things produce horrid miniature caltrops, which in fact greatly resemble a goat’s head, complete with horns – especially with horns – that endlessly torment my dog. And also me, when she tracks them inside and I walk around barefoot. As I prefer to do. The plants themselves sprawl on the hardpan as if defending against a Brazilian jiu-jitsu takedown, making it extremely hard to get at them. Unless you attack them right flat along the ground.

That’s what the scuffle hoe will do for you. New Mexico gardeners: buy it. Use it. Love it.

In other news from the terraforming of my yard, the compost I’ve got separated into its own container now, after a night’s airing-out, looks and smells and feels like nice, rich soil. Which I am given to understand is the point of the whole damned operation. Meanwhile the stuff in the composter, while it still smells a little evil, is generating heat again. I may need to turn it again in a couple days, although I confess it’ll be a spell before I’m willing to wrestle with screening it again.

Things progress. Likewise on the writing front, I’m pleased to report. I’ve slacked a bit on dictating, but that’ll come along as well.

I am in general making a lot of progress. There’s still plenty to be made, to understate grandly; and I don’t advance equally on all fronts. For example I’m currently lax about reducing starch in my diet, hence not losing weight. But … it’ll come together. I’ll learn to integrate these things. It’s all just skills, and skills are learned.

Looking over this it occurs to me to put it under the “Lazy Landscaper” rubric. But I won’t. There’s nothing lazy about using a scuffle hoe. It is more efficient than other methods, which is certainly consonant with the principles of Lazy Landscaping. Whatever they may be. But it’s pretty vigorous; and having already re-aggravated some tendonitis in my left elbow yesterday, I greatly hope not to re-enact last year when I got serious bursitis in my right elbow that literally gave me a fever and rendered the arm near-useless for months.

One way or another, I shall persevere.

As mentioned before, late this winter I decided to get serious about landscaping (among numerous other things.) I started researching inexpensive and easy composters. Despite some excellent advice from friends I wasn’t finding anything quite cheap and easy enough.

Then my friend Harriet Engle, who lives in a duplex next to my friend Roslee [...]]]> … I think.

As mentioned before, late this winter I decided to get serious about landscaping (among numerous other things.) I started researching inexpensive and easy composters. Despite some excellent advice from friends I wasn’t finding anything quite cheap and easy enough.

Then my friend Harriet Engle, who lives in a duplex next to my friend Roslee – both from the science-fiction club – revealed she was helping put a garden in their shared backyard. Since she seemed experienced I asked for her suggestions. She said she’d had success just getting a big old covered trash bin with wheels. Bingo! Thus was born what I call the Harriet Engle Rolling Composter.

(Before I went into any detail on this I asked Harriet if it was all right for me to use her full name. She allowed as she didn’t have any stalkers or outstanding warrants she was aware of, so it was.)

At Wally World I found just such trash bins, of 50-gallon capacity, for $25 each. Which definitely rang the cherries as far as “cheap” was concerned. Not too long thereafter I chanced to accompany my best friend Joe to Wal-Mart, as well as, more to the point, Joe’s pick-up truck. So I bought one of the bins and brought it home. I thought of buying a second – some systems recommend up to three separate composters – but decided I wanted to see how this one worked before expanding.

Harriet mentioned drilling holes in the bottom for drainage. I was initially concerned about compost dribbling out, but realized the quarter inch holes I intended to drill weren’t going to allow for much of that.

So I drilled my holes. Then I started layering in the weeds I cut down last fall, now thoroughly dry, in with the kitchen waste I’d accreted over eons. The whole I wet thoroughly with the hose and parked in the shade.

Soon thereafter I discovered aeration was a major deal. So out came the drill and I put some holes around the top to let the stuff breathe.

After a few days it seemed hot. Then it cooled off. I turned it. It refused to heat up. My Albuquerque gardening book said failure to heat meant I needed more nitrogen-rich material in the mix. So in went some more kitchen detritus, along with some green weeds I pulled from the backyard.

A few days thereafter I felt heat emanating when I pulled the lid off to check. Plunging my hand in – this being the rough and ready method, like pregging a horse – I found the depths uncomfortably hot to the touch. Which supposedly meant the compost was a-fermentin’. Yay!

A couple days later it was cool again. I also noticed that the heap had settled quite noticeably. My friend Larry Hays, Landscaping God, mentor, and general inspiration to me on the subject, confirmed my hope that this should mean I had, indeed, achieved compost. Indeed, he predicted as much as a third by volume would’ve converted.

Whoa! I couldn’t wait! Except I had to. To extract the compost, if any, I needed a screen to filter it. Especially since, lacking a shredder/grinder, I’ve put a lot of twigs and whatnot in that isn’t breaking down any too quickly. And I didn’t have such a screen. For all the noise being made about such matters these days it isn’t easy actually finding composting supplies.

I found compelled to make myself a Big Nasty Compost Screen, details to follow. Also I bought myself a second container to hold the hypothetical compost. Because a) I wasn’t sure the big rolly bin would fit in my car; and b) I was certain I wouldn’t have near that much compost anyway, I decided to get a smaller container. I settled on a 26-gallon trash can sans wheels.

As mentioned yesterday, I found myself too exhausted to do much with my new goodies. Last night I got a good sleep, so after doing some writing today I tackled the compost-filtering process.

When I emptied the rolling bin onto a tarp it didn’t smell that good. No huge surprise; I hadn’t turned it last week, since I wanted to combine filtering with turning, as I did today. And I commenced operations.

Emma came out to watch. For some reason she’s more sanguine about watching me do things when we’re outside; whenever I undertake any kind of physical project indoors she immediately seeks the shelter of her pen. However, the screening quickly fell into the category of Daddy Things Too Weird for Caninekind Ever to Hope to Comprehend; Emma is a highly intelligent dog, and perhaps nowhere shows it more distinctly than her ability to grasp that a certain number (a large one) of things Daddy does simply make no perceptible sense, so it’s not worth even trying. She shortly identified this as such as endeavor and went to lie across the yard. There was shade there, and anyway she had the buffering of distance in case she’d misjudged and Daddy’s special words came out.

However, a vile wind blew up, raising a big column of dust and alarming me with the prospect that my hard-earned, not to mention filtered, compost was going to blow away to Bernalillo. It also caused Emma to bail and petition to be let inside. I did, and then fortunately the wind died back and I was able to complete the turning/sifting without great further drama.

It wasn’t terribly efficient. Then again, it’s the first time I’ve tried anything like this. And on the whole, I’d have to say it was a success.

Larry will probably be amazed to learn that he’s actually been guilty of being optimistic: I didn’t wind up with a third of the original volume in compost. What I did wind up with was about a wheelbarrowful of dry, black, crumbly stuff that looks and feels like soil, anyway. At least 10 or 12 pounds of it.

I’m declaring that compost. Hence victory. Yay!

I mixed some more accumulated kitchen scraps about halfway in. When everything was back more or less in place I watered the big bin. I left the lid on the littler bin open a crack to let the finished compost air out a bit more.

Now we’ve got a gale blowing outside and it’s threatening to rain. I may yet have to race out and seal up the storage can.

But at least I got finished before the weather happened.

So, all in all, cool. The Rolling Composter works!

The purpose of this post is purely to show how utterly easy it is to compost kitchen wastes. If you want to do any kind of landscaping or gardening, or if you’re interested in recycling or self-sufficiency, now you’ll have no excuse not to just get started.

I do not recommend [...]]]> Kids, don’t try this at home!

The purpose of this post is purely to show how utterly easy it is to compost kitchen wastes. If you want to do any kind of landscaping or gardening, or if you’re interested in recycling or self-sufficiency, now you’ll have no excuse not to just get started.

I do not recommend the technique I’m about to describe. I’ll go further: don’t do this. It does not constitute housekeeping best practice. Indeed, it wins the inaugural Bad Housekeeping Seal of Reproval, which I just made up. Just confessing to it’s totally going to blight any hope I’ve had of getting dates, at least until I get thin and rich. Which fortunately are on the agenda for summer.

So. Here’s the awful easy way to start kitchen-waste composting broken into simple steps.

Do Not Do These Things:

1) Toss fruit and vegetable detritus (no meat or fat; there’s controversy over egg shells, but for now I throw ‘em in) and coffee grounds in a plastic grocery bag in the kitchen.

2) When it gets full, starts leaking (ew!), or you just can’t stand it any longer, toss onto the back porch.

3) Begin in Fall, continue over winter.

4) Springtime: suck it up and examine all those containers o’ nastiness. Surprise!

5) You have (some) compost!

Seriously. I just did this so you don’t have to. And found that, yes indeed, a fair amount of what I’d so casually disposed of had turned into what looks and smells a good deal like good, clean dirt. And much of the rest was these big cement-hard clods which I suspect getting dampened and soaking will fix.

Before I attacked the back porch I’d checked my Rolling Composter. Today it didn’t seem to be generating its own heat but smelled nice – again, like soil. What you don’t want is for it to smell like decay or ammonia or anything else vile. And it didn’t.

Since it’s been a week I turned it. And found out that a bunch of what I had tossed in had already become fairly soil-like. Now, some actual soil had gotten in there, a bit inevitably because for my dry brown layers I was forking up (something I do often, in many contexts) weeds I’d cut down last fall and left lying about. Aside from the incidental dirt – and while some composting guides advise us to toss in some earth to sort of give the mix the idea, I tend to be more afraid our awful alkali soil will just kill that stuff dead – I also found that the undersides of a lot of the dead weed layers had turned into something suspiciously compost-like. So, hey, that went in the bin too.

But still, as they say in those Aussie dubbed 1980′s kung-fu flicks. It did seem I had more soil or compost-looking stuff in there than I started with.

I turned the heap back into the bin and set it back upright. Next I drilled some aeration holes around the top of the bin so the stuff’d get more air. Then I added the accumulated kitchen waste of ages, plus some recent wastage. Then I stuck on more dried weeds, soaked hell out of it all, and covered it back up.

Oh, and here’s what you really should do about the kitchen wastes so as not to be a revolting slob:

1) Put a bucket on the floor by the sink or food-prep area.

2) Toss your debris right in there as it’s generated.

3) At the end of each day run it out and dump it into a bigger can or bucket on the back porch, or in the back yard. If inquisitive animal friends tend to frequent your premises, some kind of lid or cover would be a good idea, here.

4) When it comes time to turn your main compost pile, add the recent waste right in!

Isn’t that simple? Not to mention, uh, nicer. That’s how I’m doing it now. Really.

There’s also vermicomposting. It turns out that isn’t something you get from becoming too friendly with Paris Hilton, regardless what it sounds like. It’s a way of using earthworms to compost kitchen waste. That’s on the list to try later.

So, I am at long last doing actual landscapy things, in the case of today while taking a break from writing. I will not feel I’ve really started, however, until I dig a hole and actually plant something in it. I’ve a couple of candidates, basically awaiting me to quit dithering about where to put them. And as I mentioned yesterday, I bought those cool weapons. So now I can’t wait to try ‘em out!

Oh – as indicated, the Rolling Composter so far seems to be working well. The one issue I foresee is that I may need either another one or two or a single much bigger container. I will, shortly, post a description of where the idea of the Rolling Composter came from and how to make one.