Composting: Not a Ladies Hobby

In the Garden

In the garden, so many wonderful things to grow: flowers and herbs and tomatoes and one feels the connections to their kitchen, to the earth, to the divine order of life and seasons.

(And, isn't this a great picture of a little backyard garden? So pretty!)
A Cottage Garden By Beverlynation (Own work) [CC-BY-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons")

And, then, this woman, mistakenly decides she will try out composting. What's so hard about all that? A few coffee grounds, the snips and peels of fresh fruit and vegetables and leftover herbs. It should be a sweet and easy accomplishment.

But: 
NO! NOT! NOT! NOT AT ALL!

Okay, I don't want to discourage any of you more capable folks out there, but composting for me was a complete disaster.

After months of collecting, mixing, etc. etc., OMG this stuff smells and the smell stays and the smell STINKS B.A.D.

The more you collect, the more you have to turn it. The more there is, the heavier it gets. The heavier it gets, the harder it is to turn it. It gets flies in it and when it rains it gets even heavier and then it starts to stink and stink and then it gets even stinkier.

I understand that there ARE some nice EXPENSIVE easy (yeah!) systems that will do this for you, possibly in a much more civilized fashion, etc.

But at least for the daintier do-it-yourself-er, at least with the double pails with the holes in it system (that seemed soooo easy and soooo simple on youtube) NO NO NO NO NO!

I do understand, I could add more things to this to reduce the smell -STINK- but the thing is I cannot get far enough away from it as it is. And it is already more than I can manually stir, it is so heavy. 
And when it stinks (STINKS!), it permeates the air, your hands, the ground.

Oh ICK!

I will buy my fertilizer from the local nursery. Thank you very much. There are just some things this girl is not cut out for.

But best of luck and hat's off to you if your adventures thus went better than mine.

 English: Claes Oldenburg "Clothespin" in Center Square, Philadelphia. Dedicated before 1978, no visible copyright notice, so public domain.

17 May 2012  by Smallbones

Courtesy of Wikimedia.org / http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Clothespin_Philly_2.JPG

Holding Clothespin Over Nose.

-bbffair

The Devil Made Me Do It!

Yesterday, I was Evil!!

But what with the internet and google, information is everything when a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do.

Let me walk you through my food yesterday:

Coffee: 1 cup Orange juice and coffee with whole milk (1 cup), (the right way!) 
calories = 260

Brunch: 1 lovely Sort of Greek-Inspired Omelet:
calories =  340

5 PM (I was hungry!): 1 cup of Imagine Creamy Butternut Squash Soup (90 calories) with 1/8 cup slivered almonds (100 calories) and two cut up mushrooms (10 calories): calories for snack/could be dinner = 200 calories.

And then...

Well, about two hours later, I found this partial bag of hidden contraband: 2/3 of a bag of hot blue corn chips (the not allowed in the house, they're so good variety) and I went wild.

I mashed up 1 large avacodo with 2/3 of a jar of El Pinto All Natural Hot Salsa that I also just had to try! And between my husband and myself, we finished off the whole thing. And, boy-oh-girlfriend, it was delicious, finger-licking yumm!

And then I went to see just how bad a bad girl had been.

The chips were 140 calories a serving with 9 servings in a full bag so, 2/3 of a bag or 6 "servings " (yeah) = 840 calories.  The avacodo was medium, but I'll calculate it as a big one just to be safe at 322 calories and the salsa (which was gloriously hot-hot-hot, just like the top of the jar promised it would be) was...  (Wait a minute. This can't be right. No it is!)  ...5 calories per serving (2 TBSP) with 15 servings in a jar and 2/3 of a jar was only 50 calories.

Um, (drum-roll), the grand total for this decadence was 1212 calories, split in half with my evil husband and I still came out to a protein rich yumm-loaded totally satisfying dinner calories count here of 606 calories!!!

I LOVE INFORMATION!!!

I mean, OMGosh, my Total food calories intake for the day was still only 1406 calories!!!

For a BAD girl, that information is Heaven!

(However, if you went for the margaritas, I cannot help you further.)

-bbffair

[Devil (above) by ojotez, courtesy of photobucket.com]