Compost happens...

Well. This city girl now has a compost pile in her backyard. Will wonders never cease?

My friend C is helping us get our garden in shape... she began by pulling up weeds (which are never-ending out here) and she will soon be filling the flowerbeds with drought-resistant plants and flowers, giving me an education in annuals and perennials and everything else inbetween.

Lesson Number One was the compost pile. All those weeds we're pulling up--- C says they're gold, and shouldn't be tossed into a Hefty bag and then sent to the local land-fill. "Put them into a compost pile, along with fruit and vegetable scraps and tea bags and coffee grounds... after a good while, you'll have the richest fertilizer to pack around your garden...."

Well. I can certainly pile the weeds up... and saving bits and pieces of fruits and vegetables is easy enough... and used tea bags, and coffee grounds... eggshells and the like.  C found the perfect spot out behind the barn for the compost pile... there was already a big indentation in the ground there, and we've filled it up with all the weeds she pulled over the weekend.

I now have a covered canister on my kitchen counter, a very convenient receptacle to hold those food scraps. When it's filled, out to the compost pile I go, armed with a rake so I can just make a little hole in the weeds and dump in the scraps, then cover them up with the weeds--- all of that so night-time animals don't have a feast of fruit and veggie bits out behind the barn under a moonlit sky.

Does having a compost pile make me a country girl now?  I don't think so.  I may be saving food scraps and eggshells and orange rinds, but when I go out there to bury them in the compost pile, my nails are polished and I'm wearing a bracelet or two and dangling earrings... which I hope I don't lose in that compost pile, by the way.