So in her comment yesterday to this post, she said:

I shall gently remind you that TWICE now you have alluded to said wonderful news yet have neglected to deliver it.

TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My response was to tell her that I soon would, and mimic an [...]]]> … Sara’s totally gonna kick my butt.

So in her comment yesterday to this post, she said:

I shall gently remind you that TWICE now you have alluded to said wonderful news yet have neglected to deliver it.

TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME TELL ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My response was to tell her that I soon would, and mimic an evil laugh.

So today I sat down to reveal the Wonderful News, and discovered … that I already did.

It’s the Wild Cards thing:  there’s a new anthology a-brewing – Fort Freak – and I’m in it.

As I’ve indicated, I’ve been getting lots more stuff done of late. But it’s taken a toll. In part I need to figure out how to manage my sleep better. One consequence of this is that my brains are sometimes even more scattered than usual.

Then again, I did reveal the Big Secret in my next post … on the 17^th of May.

In other news, anybody got any cheap and easy solution (my favorite kind!) to the problem of how to measure 2 2/3^rds cubic feet? It’s a gardening thing. I’ll tell you all about it when I get this thing done in a few days.

Also, any ideas on how to dry compost? I need, by remarkable coincidence, 2 2/3^rds cubic feet of the stuff. I think I’ve made that much, and probably more, in the handy composter I fabricated out of a wheeled 50 gallon Wal-Mart garbage bin. It was yesterday when trying to turn and sift it – yes, when the boys and I experienced our little shovel-handle mishap – that I discovered it’s basically mud. Now, I suspect strongly that means it’s mostly, yes, compost; but extracting it from the unfinished bits with my homemade screen was less than productive. Not to mention not so much “sifting” as “grating.”

So I want to try drying it out and then sifting. The problem is how to keep it from all blowing away in the process, this being Albuquerque, and also to keep a lot of crap from getting in it. In large part literally, since a lot of birds hang out in my yard.

Suggestions, please, O my wise and puissant readers?

Along the way I discovered an Important Composting Don’t: don’t hit yourself of in the [...]]]> Got much done today. Reread lots of my big fantasy novel manuscript (you know the one), walked Emma, and turned and sifted the compost pile, both for the first time in way too long. Plus, you know, stuff. Standard daily chores.

Along the way I discovered an Important Composting Don’t: don’t hit yourself of in the nuts with the handle of a shovel. Even if not very hard. Just … don’t.

After all this time composting I’m not sure I’ve generated enough yet for my Special Purposes. While I will unveil shortly, once we move beyond the Gathering Materials Phase to the Actually Doing Stuff Phase. This may entail pictures, should I be able to coax acceptable images of out my cell phone camera.

And now I feel as if I’ve been dragged up ten flights of stairs by my heels.  Need to get busy soon getting to sleep, so I can start getting up at a regular time, and get even more done.

More news soon.  I promise.

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.

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.