Having said that, I’m supremely lazy with my compost.  I don’t break up the deposits into similarly sized pieces. I dump and dump forever, never turning it.  I plan on using the soil, but there’s always  something left to break down, and then exclaim at the amazing and unplanned tomatoes and bell peppers that grow OUT of it every year because there are so many tomato and bell pepper innards in the kitchen waste.

In some circles it could be termed more of a forgotten science project.

This spring however, in a fit of gusto, I decided to turn the pile. I know why I should do this more often—aeration, redistribution of microbes, ensuring proper moisture—but most of the time, I rationalize that a process as natural as this actually does better left alone.  Still, I want that dirt this year.  Planting season has begun, and I have three vegetable beds I want to feed with my own compost.

So I dug in.  And began unearthing hundreds of worms.  I mean, in a lifetime of composting, I have never seen the like.  Can it be Brewmaster’s discarded grains?  Can it be that I’ve “forgotten” about so many acorn squashes this winter?  It is seriously awe-inspiring.

Worms, worms, worms!!

Not only that, but upon further research, I have discovered that these little wrigglers can be brought inside and dumped into the counter-top composting can…the one we always overfill within two days. It sounds like a marvelous plan. The rest of the family is not as excited about this prospect as I am. But I’m sure I can get them on board.

Frustrated with the small capacity composter, I began filling up paper grocery bags and throwing them in as well (Brewmaster never remembers to take the re-usable shopping bags, and at last I can stop nagging him about it).  The worms seem to like this.  In addition to this kind of paper, the pile gets the egg cartons (faithfully made of paper mulch by my long standing favorite egg farmers at The Country Hen), paper towels, and the seemingly endless supply of kleenex my allergies consume.  Seems the worms like all that too.

It’s a crazy amazing efficient process. I’m in awe of nature on a daily basis. And it’s weirdly reassuring that all this digging and turning over won’t kill these guys if I accidentally sever them in two.

Worms amidst cranberries...dating this layer of the pile to around Christmas. Very scientific.

Some composting resources:

Sierra Club Video on Composting

EPA’s Composting Page

Compost Page on Wikipedia

This past Halloween, the kids made it through the whole of the pumpkin carving process on their own.  Considering a responsible parent must supply the dullest knives imaginable in order to ensure all fingers remain attached to the body, this is something of a magnificent feat.

Mr. Brewmaster always goes ambitious, and this year produced the Lord Vader-o-lantern.  His creations consistently leave our humble o-lanterns in the dust.

Convincing my husband to go along with this was a simple matter of playing the family obligation card—we were participating in a joint vacation with my father from California and visiting his middle sister, possibly my father’s last trip home—and the issue was settled.  My husband is nothing if not a Man of Family Values.  That’s not to say he fits the political profile of those touting Family Values as their reason for spouting often ridiculous rhetoric.  Absolutely not.  Which is why this trip was anticipated with some anxiety on his part, being born on foreign soil, disturbed with the antics of the Christian right, and generally unsure if visiting “the South” was beneficial for sane Northerners like ourselves.

Now, the family aspect made the trip worthwhile in itself.  My dad grew up in Fort Smith, his father one of nine.  Most of the family is still somewhere in the area or surrounding states.  There are a LOT of stories to hear, especially when everyone is older than 80+ years of age (well, my dad was the miracle child, so he was always the youngling…he’s nowhere near 80). The kids met great aunts, just like I did when my father took us back on a trip to Arkansas when I was 6.

But the pleasant surprise came when we discovered that Arkansas itself had plenty to offer, especially for a tree hugger like myself.

The most enjoyable find was the War Eagle Caverns, where we got a nearly private tour due to timing.  These weren’t my first caves, but they were the most “civilized” I’d visited, in that they were partially lighted and we got a tour guide. We saw more than one species of bat, salamanders and spiders(ugh) along with the expected stalactite/stalagmite type formations. It was beautiful, a physical document to a part of the earth’s history, each crag and crevice notched by the travels of water, the rocks themselves the remnants of sedimentary ocean floor. Our planet is simply a fantastic wonderland.

In the end the trip felt too short.  We had destinations we just couldn’t get to, restaurants not yet patroned (though can I quickly mention my favorite meal was eaten at Rolando’s..latin/cuban deliciousness, seriously).  I was sorry to be on my way home when the time came.  Who woulda thought?

Is it the heat?  These jumpers are everywhere right now, and they look like the desert too. Which matches perfectly with my dead brown crunchy grass.

Elusive Dragonfly

This guy flitted off so fast I could only get one shot.  Hopefully he is busy eating bloodsuckers.

Zucchini

A new zucchini to cut every 3–4 days.

Zucchini is a favorite of mine to grow because it is so blasted easy!  The first year I grew them, I crowded them with tomatoes, to which I gave higher priority.  Not only that, but my kitchen compost carried with it an extremely fast growing mystery squash, whose color and shape matched nothing I saw in the grocery stores, until it sat on my counter for a few months (at which point it turned yellow) and I cut into its stringy flesh to discover one of my favories—spaghetti squash!

Did any of this daunt my zucchini’s??  Definitely not. They gave me an abundance of fruit, large and small.  And I vowed thereafter to cut them as babies, because there are always so many, and the babies are delicious.

Cucumber

The cucumber vine Jared brought home from his gardening class at school.

This year Jared took a gardening class at a greenhouse next door to his school, and brought me several things home.  One was a cucumber plant.

Now, I had tried to grow cucumbers before, and somehow ended up killing them all before they could be safely ensconced permanently in the ground.  Perhaps I was overeager…and perhaps also we had a spring this year that allowed for early outer plantings.

Either way, this one lonely cucumber has climbed it’s way up and over its trellis, and has borne yummy fruit.  Even the kids ate it up, and they are still exasperating with choosing foods.

Tomatoes

The first of the Tasty Evergreen Tomatoes...how does one know when they are ripe, I wonder?

This year’s tomatoes came from Seed Savers, as I wanted some heirloom varieties, and something other than red. The tallest and most sturdy of the three varieties was the Tasty Evergreen. Being that it’s green, I’m not sure when I should pull this puppy off the vine. Although, I throw unripe tomatoes on the grill and eat them too, so perhaps it won’t really matter.

The first of the Black Krim tomatoes.

I opted for a Black Krim variety as well, though it’s proving much less robust than its green sister, being much shorter, and developing rolling bottom leaves. Apparently it’s nothing to worry TOO much about, and clearly it’s not affecting its fruit production.

Corn

One of the corn plants Jared brought home. It has red hair.

Another one of Jared’s take homes, we have exactly two stalks of corn. Not ever thinking of growing corn to begin with, I put these guys in the ground as a lark, and voila…I have ears! With fuchsia hair.

Because Jared’s birthday was the day before, we swung by the MIT museum to check out the robotics exhibits, amongst other things. Now he wants to go to MIT. Assuming he does his part and gets accepted, I suppose I should do my part and start saving every little penny. It’s definitely a far cry from his earlier sentiment of a couple of years ago, when he teared up at the thought of going to college at all because it meant he would be leaving home.

We finished off the day at Full Moon for a delicious, albeit loud (they boast a play room in the dining room for the little kids), meal. I loved it! Awesome food, the pulse of Cambridge, and the kids didn’t have to moderate their voices. What more could you ask for?

When I moved to New England and into my own house, I vowed not to be a “waterer”.  Each year I look for landscaping flora that will survive on its own.  The daylily is one of the few.