busy saturday

After we'd caught up on sleep and had a chance to enjoy a cup of coffee, we got busy knocking out projects -- or at least making some progress.  I painted, pruned flowers, worked on a clogged sink, re-upholstered a chair (well, the chair pad), worked on the garden, and painted four nativity sets for my mom.  CJ stripped paint and also put together our new compost bin!

Back in May, I bought a countertop compost bin.  Last year, when we collected eggshells and coffee grounds, I just stored it and then applied directly on top of our garden.  With this new bin, I started throwing everything and anything I thought would compost inside.  And needless to say, it started to get really, really gross and full.

I shopped around for a compost bin and found one for $100 that I liked, but it got very mixed reviews.  Although I wanted to compost, I wasn't sure I wanted to spend $200+ on a super nice compost bin.  Then I found this composter at Sam's Club for less than $35, and it had received excellent reviews, so I went ahead and bought it this week.

I realize I'm not going to get compost out of it until the beginning of fall at best, but I'm still pretty excited.  I just have to make sure that Henry doesn't see it as a new toy and I need to keep it heaped up with soil and straw to make sure it doesn't attract anything undesirable.

The rest of our garden is looking pretty good.  I need to make another cut on the rhubarb this week.  On one hand, it's slowing down, but it's finally producing bigger stalks.  Our green beans haven't sprouted yet, but are still growing.  Two of our pepper plants never took off and then Henry uprooted one this week, leaving us with just one pepper plant.  He also took off our first green pepper, but luckily, it's sprouted some more.

We ate our first tomatoes this week.  (And by we, I really mean that I ate them before CJ could get to them.)  It figures that our first tomato to ripen was on the topsy turvy.  It was very small.  I noticed it was ripe one day and went out the next, and the bottom had rotted out already.  I'm going to write the topsy turvy off as a fail.  We already have plenty of grape tomatoes -- that's what I've been eating -- and our first yellow tomato finally ripened, so we'll eat on that tomorrow probably.

I did a crummy job of watering the plants this week since it wasn't as hot, but I do have to say that putting down straw was a genius move (thanks, Jill!) and so I haven't felt like I've been fighting a losing battle with the garden either.

With that, I need to go clean up so we can enjoy the rest of our night.  Happy July 4th!

(P.S.  I wasn't paid for my views on the topsy turvy.)