The Composter

I have been a recycle nazi for several years now, but I hate how much I still waste. I have so many leaves and now a desire to garden, so I decided a composter was the next step. At least I could start some compost while I work on the garden. I found one at Homedepot.com and went for it.
It came in the mail this weekend and although the instructions suggest using 2 people to put it together, I managed to do it on my own, with the exception of the last 6 screws, so my ex-husband helped me with those while dropping the kids off today.
I bought some compost starter and my new composting adventure begins.
This is the composter I got. You spin it to turn the soil. It holds 65 gallons of compost.

I am so excited to get my kids involved in this process.

My Perfect Garden...for my yard

I have 2 dogs. Rocky, a male boxer who is eternally loyal and Chica, a female boxer, who is spastic and loves to chew and eat just about anything. Before Chica I had maintained a beautiful lawn. I did semi annual maintenance on my sprinklers, making sure they were always in working order, but the first time Chica saw the sprinklers come on she lost her mind. She bit off the first sprinkler head she got to in just a matter of seconds. I had my boyfriend repair the sprinkler head and set the timers for times I thought would be safe from Chica, but it did not work. Before I knew it she had eaten ALL 9 of my sprinkler heads. I purchased new heads and convinced my boyfriend to help me out again. It was not long before she got to a few more. I gave up and stopped watering my yard and now it is a dirt pit with dog poop and garbage that always manages to gather in my yard after every wind storm.

My trees were in bad shape with out the sprinklers, so my boyfriend helped me run bubblers to them. The next day I noticed that Chica bit the heads off of those. We came up with a solution. We bought a valve box for each bubbler. This is what we used.

We dug down about 8 inches, ran the bubbler through the hole in the valve box and replaced the dirt around it. This has worked and Chica has not been able to get into damage them. I still have not solved the sprinkler issue, but we are still working on that. I am thinking metal sprinkler heads. ;o)
Meanwhile, I knew that I could not build a regular garden. I knew that whatever I made would have to be Chica-proof. This is what we came up with.

I found this image online and the location in the yard that will be best and soon we will build it. I figure if we use chicken wire around the base of it and a mesh on the upper portion I will have the whole thing secure. I will be placing it in an area of the yard that gets full sun all day for those plants that require it, but I can use tarps to cover the sides or top for plants that do not favor full sun.

I am looking at a way to make this moveable if I wanted to move it to a different location in the yard. I had thought about posts that attach at each corner that would allow four people to pick it up together and move it. If the Egyptians could build pyramids without machinery, I think we can move a little ol' garden when need to.

The Farmer Neighbor

So, over the last 3 years I have had a wierd relationship with the neighbor behind me. My dogs bark at him. My kids have kids balls into his yard and more recently Rocky, my male boxer, tried to go through our wall to attack him. After animal control reached out I made a visit to his house to resolve the issue of the wall. Clarence, who hates to be called sir, invited me into his humble abode and into his backyard to show me the damage. I walked out to a beautiful yard with citrus trees and a garden that was lined with vegetables. Immediately envious, I realized that I can do the same thing.
My boyfriend, Josh, fixed the wall and my gardening research began. In the mean time, Clarence has been so kind, passing over lemons and oranges for us to enjoy and I feel like I owe him something in return.
A week later my step dad, Dave, came over and trimmed my trees and met Clarence. He was able to give him some chopped wood and I feel like we are on the mend.
Next time...the perfect garden...for me and my yard.