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Composting
Apr. 24th, 2008 12:54 pmI just made my adventure trip to Lexington - its lovely out! For $30 (through the city of Waltham and some kind of arrangement they made with Lexington) I got a neato composter http://www.earthmachine.com/index_r.html and a home composting wheel with lots of tips on the process http://www.ehspublishing.com/cart/product.php?productid=16140 . This is good, because I'll need all the help I can get! My Dad was very into growing vegetables when I was very young but gave up since the woodchucks were eating everything. As a result, I was never around anyone planting, so its all kind of new for me and I'm starting from scratch. I need to do some serious research on composting rabbit waste also, because as far as I gather since they are vegetarians their waste wouldn't be bad in a pile deemed for growing edibles. We use recycled paper litter and change their pan (medium cat sized one) about twice a week. If I could turn that into black gold it wouldn't be a bad thing. How crazy do I really want to go with all of this stuff? I guess I thought the same before diving into making our own cleaning products, but now that I'm used to it its very simple and it has saved us a good deal of money (in addition to making me feel better about ridding our house of all of those chemicals).
I'm hoping we can spend part of Saturday cleaning up the yard a bit. Our gutter fell off at some point so nothing has been collecting in our rain barrel and on particularly rainy days we've had water in our basement (our fieldstone foundation needs repointing too). I'm going to put the composter next to the rain barrel. I'd like to also find a home for and assemble our new clothes drying rack, trying to balance the most time in the sun possible with keeping it respectfully back from the street. I'm trying to find that nice balance between pretty but natural, eco conscious without creating an eyesore, purposeful without going crazy and consuming more and more building bits - that kind of thing.
Now I'm wondering if we should put a retaining wall in our front yard? Our front steps need patching and our driveway is in serious need of repair. I'm going to poke around on Angie's list and see if I can find someone who does all of that stuff and perhaps get some quotes. Or would a landscaper build a retaining wall and not a mason/stone person? This is conceivably all stuff we could do, but I know its not anything that Brian wants to do (I sure as heck don't know where to start with it). Either way, I'm excited about being creative outside. Each year there has been some kind of indoor project to worry about but for the first time ever, for the most part that stuff is taken care of (beyond some ceiling repairs and final painting that we've been too lazy to do in our hallways). I'd love for it to be a natural extension of our living space, because up until now we've really taken our little piece of green for granted.
I'm hoping we can spend part of Saturday cleaning up the yard a bit. Our gutter fell off at some point so nothing has been collecting in our rain barrel and on particularly rainy days we've had water in our basement (our fieldstone foundation needs repointing too). I'm going to put the composter next to the rain barrel. I'd like to also find a home for and assemble our new clothes drying rack, trying to balance the most time in the sun possible with keeping it respectfully back from the street. I'm trying to find that nice balance between pretty but natural, eco conscious without creating an eyesore, purposeful without going crazy and consuming more and more building bits - that kind of thing.
Now I'm wondering if we should put a retaining wall in our front yard? Our front steps need patching and our driveway is in serious need of repair. I'm going to poke around on Angie's list and see if I can find someone who does all of that stuff and perhaps get some quotes. Or would a landscaper build a retaining wall and not a mason/stone person? This is conceivably all stuff we could do, but I know its not anything that Brian wants to do (I sure as heck don't know where to start with it). Either way, I'm excited about being creative outside. Each year there has been some kind of indoor project to worry about but for the first time ever, for the most part that stuff is taken care of (beyond some ceiling repairs and final painting that we've been too lazy to do in our hallways). I'd love for it to be a natural extension of our living space, because up until now we've really taken our little piece of green for granted.
