Finished: Compost Bins

One project done! We built these compost bins from pallets from Don's work that were going to be thrown out, old wire hangers, and some scrap wood. It was easy and cost nothing. Tonight Don grubbed out a weedy shrubby tree thing that was growing right through one of the bins-- you can see it in the picture-- and turned the soil beneath, and I got the heap going with some brush, weeds, and a big sack o' coffee grounds from Starbucks. Right now there are two bins, each about four feet square and a little less than four feet high. Eventually I'll probably add a third bin, so that I can have a three-pile system: one to actively add to, one that's full but still 'cooking', and one that's full of ready-to-use compost.

The rest of the weekend was spent working on the window frames and designing the vegetable gardens and chicken coop, respectively. (I probably don't have to specify who was sweating outside, and who was indoors on the sofa with a notebook.) One of the truck tires went spectacularly flat when Don ran over a curb, and getting it replaced ate up a lot of time Sunday that would have otherwise gone to the windows. Bought a ladder though while we were at Sears, so that we can stop borrowing the one from the hotel. We'll need it for the windows at the back of the house, for roof/ gutter work, maybe for some of the pruning.

These are in the very back corner of our backyard; in the background are the neighbors' house and concrete retaining wall. I hope we can back our fence right up alongside that wall, but we won't know until the survey is done.