Sunday, September 24, 2006

Sunday Morning Compost

We have a compost bin that gets added to frequently, but is turned irregularly. (Mom and B only do it occasionally on adding kitchen scraps, and I only think of it when I'm gardening.) Wasps have discovered this delectable buffet. Step 1 (a few days ago): place a bunch of root-beer-baited pop bottle wasp traps to reduce their numbers. Step 2 (this morning): turn the compost first thing in the morning while they're still sluggish.

Safety precautions: Mom and B watching from the window, in case I get stung. (I've got allergies to tons of stuff, but I've never been stung before... so I have no idea what sort of reaction I would have, if any.)

Thankfully I still haven't ever been stung. :) I stayed calm (I think that's a key in not getting stung, but it could just be my dumb luck), and the wasps were pretty sluggish.

The compost still needs some more turning, since it's hard to deal with a backlog all in a single turning. Plus I stopped when I unearthed a number of wasps that had gotten buried... I figured they wouldn't be in a good mood if they managed to get going. However, there are a lot fewer deadfall apples exposed, so this should improve things quite a bit. I'll go out again in a day or two for another turning, and I'll add a bunch of green stuff on top from dead-heading and pruning as well. (Much less tasty than apples.)

The abstract (due last Friday) still needs composting. We have something submitted, but I need to read over and add to it. (My advisor got fed up and wrote the thing, but I'm the one who knows what's going on. So I need to check that what he wrote makes sense, and covers everything.)

The sock-yarn-scraps-turning-blanket is also coming along (write a bit, knit a bit). I did a few calculations, and I think my blanket will have 364 squares when it's finished. Since I'm currently on the 36th square, that means I'm around 10% done. (Not counting finishing.) I'll post a photo after I've done some more paper-composting.

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