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Showing posts with label outdoor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label outdoor. Show all posts

Sunday, May 02, 2010 4 comments

Unplanned Dim-itude

I’d planned to have at least two posts up this week, but life (as usual) got in the way. Here’s one of the things that kept me busy this week:

Firewood out back

Oh well… while I’m getting tomorrow’s White Pickups episode queued up — and this is one you won’t want to miss — you can watch Mason getting on his feet (click for full-size and then some):

Mason pulls up

His balance is improving rapidly. Last weekend, when he first started pulling up solo, he had to have both hands firmly on some kind of support. This morning, after working at it all week, he succeeded in reaching down and grabbing something off the floor of his playpen while holding on with the other hand. Panda said one morning he turned loose and free-stood for all of two seconds before lunging for the rail.

Maybe I’ll get some more blog-related stuff done next week.

Sunday, April 18, 2010 5 comments

The Week in Pictures

Just a few of the things, normal and not-so-normal, going on around the manor this week…

Dogwood and cypressThe dogwoods shook off their yellow early in the week, and are now their usual blazing white. The blooms aren’t as plentiful this year as they have been at least some years past.

This particular shot is the dogwood at the corner of the driveway, with a gigantic cypress in the background. I’ve joked about renting a bucket truck to string Christmas lights on that sucker.


Mason bathMason loves being outside, and loves getting a bath. He got too big for the bathroom sink, so now he gets his dunk time in the kitchen sink.

I didn’t have any pix from the various baby food showers he administered to his grandparents this week, unfortunately. On the other hand, I don’t have to worry about cleaning off the camera lens if one of those sneezes got directed that way either.

The Boy takes Mason outside in the stroller; sometimes he sits and plays guitar for him. Mason is fascinated by the guitar and the sound it makes… but most of all he enjoys his “dad time” (what little he gets). He also met Buster T. Butthead, who is officially the first dog he’s petted (stroke, stroke, grab handful of hair). When he’s running around in a few months, I expect Buster will be his best buddy. We’ll probably need to give the dog a bath, now that I think about it…


Tree cuttingI spent much of yesterday cutting up a poplar tree with Mr. Sunshine. This was not my plan for the day — I was going to do the Bakin’ Fool thing and hot up the kitchen all day. But they’d dropped it in the area in front of the chicken house, where feed trucks will soon need to go, so it needed to be taken care of. It took us most of the day, cutting off the smaller branches to clear the work area then feeding them to my chipper-shredder… once the work area was clear, the rest of it went fairly quickly. Everything is stacked or piled up here at the manor except for the trunk pieces. We moved them out of the way and Mrs. Fetched said she’ll get the splitter down there and finish that up this week.

Now that’s not even beginning to address what’s waiting for me behind the manor — the above picture tells that particular tale (left side morning, right side evening). Mrs. Fetched has complained for a while about several oak trees close to the house out back; one does make a bad habit of dropping limbs on the roof above our bedroom. Since the renters requested removal of a similarly-positioned tree at the old place, she decided to deal with both jobs at once. So now I have quite a bit of raw firewood to process, and I won’t have to go far to get to it. I’ll have to see if The Boy is interested in getting started on it. I think we’ll miss that extra shade in the evenings, but what do I know?

Cinnamon rollsBut even though my day got spent cutting trees instead of kneading, what I wanted to get done yesterday actually happened. Instead of making bread, we bought a loaf. DoubleRed made cookies. And after supper and a brief rest, I made some cinnamon rolls. I took a few to Daughter Dearest, since her Spring Concert was today. Still plenty left, come by the manor and grab one!

Thursday, October 08, 2009 4 comments

A bad sign becomes a good sign…

Some longer-time readers may remember when the developers got too close, about a month before I posted the first episode of FAR Future. What a difference 2-½ years and a housing crash makes, right? Then and now…

New subdivision, May 2007 Defunct subdivision, October 2009


The developer put up a sign, mowed down some trees, cut a few roads into the land… and went Tango Uniform. The banks are trying to get their money — all their money — from a prospective buyer. I got two words: Fat. Chance. I suppose if they hold on long enough, they’ll get it… but in the meantime, they’ll be on the hook for the property taxes. Meanwhile, it’s an attractive nuisance of sorts: people hunt the place, and I’ve been sorely tempted to ride the motorcycle in and spin a few doughnuts. Last year, the cops busted some Gwinnett County folks who had started farming the former farmland… unfortunately, their crop was “a green leafy substance” aka The Evil Weed. Seems like most of the drug and gang issues we have here involve a Gwinnett County connection, although that didn’t cross my mind at all when I set the action (at least the early action) of White Pickups there.

Speaking of plants and weeds, the fall wildflowers/weeds are doing their thing now:

Fall flowers

I took these during a walk yesterday afternoon, as well as the overgrown sign, using the new 100-300mm lens. A couple little girls bouncing on a trampoline in the front yard stopped to talk to me and ask me what I was doing. I figured a parental type would be shortly outside, wondering what strange man was talking to their kids, but I was spared a potential grilling and went on my way.

Mason had his first-month checkup yesterday. He’s gained nearly 3 pounds, and is pretty healthy beyond the usual infantile afflictions. He has thrush, which looks like some milk got stuck to his tongue, but it’s already responding to the medication and right now his biggest problem is constipation. That’s pretty miserable for everyone within earshot, but fortunately it’s starting to (ahem) pass. He’s one of the most enthusiastic babies I’ve ever fed… I recorded some of the noises he makes when he’s chowing on the bottle. Have a listen…



And right now, he’s “sound” asleep. I hope he forgives me for this when he’s older.

Saturday, May 16, 2009 2 comments

Crazy Rhodo and the Flower Power

Sounds like a good name for a rock band, huh?

Rhododendrons

She has her accompanists…

Like Sage.

Flowering sage

Sage adds a little spice to the music. She's pretty strong, and likes to spread out. She’s been around for a while.

Then there's the wild child of the band, "Mountain" Laurel:



Laurel’s a big girl, which is how she got her nickname. But she sure dresses up nice…

Then there’s Rose:

Mother's Day Rose

Rose is a thorny one, and has an attitude. She pretty much takes over wherever she’s planted. Pull her up and she comes right back.

Finally, there’s Iris:

Irises

Iris is a thin, shy girl. But she’s pretty and all the fans wish they could be her.

Meanwhile, in real life, The Boy and his band were here playing their own music today. Mrs. Fetched is cooking sausage for a breakfast casserole tomorrow, and the aroma is somewhat distracting…

Friday, May 01, 2009 6 comments

Friday Follies, New Poll, etc.

Well. Now that the thunderstorms have passed through — and God knows we needed the rain here — I can say hello once again.

It has been a week. Actually, it has been a month. In terms of time sinks, April was almost as bad as August usually is, although it (mostly) didn’t involve chicken houses. I’m less than 3,000 words short of completing FAR Future, which is maybe 1,000 words less than where I was at the beginning of the month. But at a post a week, I could sit on my hands all the way through July before I really have to start worrying. Next week will have (for the first time in quite a while) a double feature of FAR Future, because it’s really a single (long) episode split into two pieces. They’ll come out on Monday and Tuesday mornings, respectively. What I’m saying is, I want to get it done so I can start in on the next project… but there’s no pressure otherwise.

I’ve finally gotten started in earnest on a little garden here at the manor. I bought some yellow pear and Rutgers tomatoes last week, along with some jalapeños (my cash crop) and various herbs. The tomatoes, peppers, and lemon balm are now planted (the latter two just before the rain). The lemon balm was starting to wilt, so I knew that had to be addressed pronto; I picked one of the areas where the butterfly bushes were uprooted, then got rid of the violet-weeds. I'm trying to figure out where to put the two oregano plants; the one I have now is turning invasive, so they need to be out of the way but close enough to harvest. Wherever I decide to put the mint and rosemary, it won’t be anywhere near the oregano.

A couple of news articles caught my eye, besides the whole swine flu thing. One was about Congress starting to put a leash on credit card companies (especially since they’re taking bailout money). It doesn’t go nearly as far as I’d like, but it’s a good start. Another was about how an open-source programmer cussed out Adobe over the Photoshop PSD format. Personally, I think Adobe needs to be cussed out (and more) on a daily basis, but that’s just me.

Moving on to the poll gone by… here’s the final tally.

tax poll

Most of you guys are efficient tax-filing machines… January and February indeed! Those of you who filed in April — the last two weeks before the deadline — I can relate, that’s where I landed too. I really wanted to file right away, joining that Jan/Feb majority, but one thing led to another and next thing I knew it was April. The latest poll is more of a fun little guessing game… let’s all try to guess where gas prices are going to go.

Daughter Dearest is nominally done with college — her last final was Tuesday — but she had to go back this evening to sing at the baccalaureate, and I have to take her tomorrow morning to sing at the graduation. She’s going to be nice enough to give me her network password so I can get some surfing done tomorrow (I don’t have a ticket to the ceremony)… if I really get inspired, I might finish FAR Future right there in the performing arts center.

Saturday, April 04, 2009 8 comments

A walk around the yard

The wild violets are in wild riot all across my lawn. This was the first pic I took with my new f1.8, 50mm lens — it worked pretty good in the dim of a drizzly evening:

Violets all over the yard

Cutting one out of the herd and getting really up close and personal (with a +4 close-up filter, back to the 28-135 zoom lens):

White violet, +4 close-up filter

For whatever reason, this dogwood is always the first to go full-bloom around the manor. Maybe being between the studio and detached garage puts it in a warm spot or something:

Dogwood over the studio

Directly to the right of where I was standing for the shot above (in front of the attached garage), Mrs. Fetched put a couple of tulips in a flower bed. She’s thrilled that they’re doing so well.

Tulip

You can see the edge of the cold frame just to the left of the studio, back in the dogwood picture. I have spinach, lettuce, and onions in the three trays… of the three, the onions (on the right) are doing best so far, but you might have to click through to the Big Picture to see them. I've also got some lettuce in the ground, it seems to be slow to sprout. Maybe it’ll get going soon.

Planting trays

I don’t know if I mentioned that Mrs. Fetched and her mom really got medieval on the butterfly bushes last week. They actually yanked some out of the ground! They’ll come right back, though — they’ll take over if you let them. They’re starting to green up, so we’ll be getting plenty of buggy visitors soon…

Butterfly bushes, post-crewcut

Another plant that’s working on what Iowa Victory Gardener calls “weed status” is the oregano. It has developed a clever strategy of staying low and creeping through the winter, then shooting upward with the temperatures. I thought it had strangled the mint, but it’s still in the game… just surrounded.

Oregano

The blossoming cherry is also doing nicely, although some of the heavy wind we’ve been having knocked a few off the tree. But it’s still in pretty good shape. As I was focusing, one of the substitute pollinators came up over the top to see what I was up to… once he realized I was taking pictures, he turned the other way.

Wasp on cherry blossom

So why am I showing you all this now? Well… looks like we’ll be getting a freeze Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, with lows of 28°F. So it might all be gone in a few days.

Wednesday, March 18, 2009 8 comments

Violets and Business Models

While I was working at home today, Mrs. Fetched had a client in for some video work. Ironically enough, this client makes (wait for it) poultry processing equipment. I had to take a gadget out to the studio for a little shooting, and noticed the wild violets were once again springing up all over the yard (clicking the photo will give you something larger than life):

White wild violet

Going back inside, I reminded Mrs. Fetched to tell the client that I did product photography for my day job… gotta make these Shiny Things earn their keep, after all. I’d started a blog post about a month ago called “Musings on Photography and Copyrights,” but never got much farther than the title. Technology has dealt a serious blow to photography as a profession these days…
  • $1500 will buy you a pro-level (or at least prosumer) DSLR and the essentials — the barriers to entry have never been lower. But the only photo I ever sold, I took with my late lamented PowerShot (which cost about $300).

  • Digital photography itself has all but wiped out the darkroom. As an old friend of mine (who now shoots weddings) told me, “I used to spend a lot of time in the darkroom, now I spend it all in Photoshop.”

  • Scanners and computers have wrecked the traditional photographer’s business model. People are going to scan their portraits and print copies — it doesn’t matter (to them) if the copy isn’t quite as good, they’ve been trained to not care about quality. And their attitude toward copyright is something like, “I paid some hundreds of bucks for this, it’s mine!”

The guy with the medium-format camera and the account with a commercial film processing facility are still around, but their niche is truly a niche these days. Of course, there are always the people who work for Sports Illustrated or Time; major media will always need skilled photographers, even if they end up becoming web-only publications sooner or later.

The business model of the independent photographer has taken a mortal blow. But perhaps a new business model might work.

One facet could be summed up as “Photography and” or even "and Photography” — in other words, photography becomes a part of the business… and not necessarily the primary part. As I mentioned, I already take product photos as part of my technical writing job. It was something that needed to be done, and I learned how to do them well with basic equipment. But even if photography is secondary, it can provide a competitive edge to the business — if the client needs a good photo, there’s no need to contract with another person who might also take your primary work too.

The whole copyright issue needs to be addressed. With no negatives, digital photography might be best approached as a “work for hire,” the same way technical writing contractors work. Ideally, both you and your customer would hold joint ownership — the customer can fling a copy into Photoshop and mash it up or whatever, while you can license it as a stock shot or use it as part of your portfolio. To get people interested in your work to begin with, consider placing a few good shots under a Creative Commons Attribution license: this allows other people to use them (and spread them around) while you get credit for your work. You might as well make this whole file sharing culture work for you, right?

Of course, I might be completely off base. But this is part of my backup plan in case my day job goes away.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009 4 comments

Yellowbells

From the Sunday photowalk.

Yellowbell

Everything blooming that day was yellow. Today, the Bradford Pear trees are blooming, and those are more white.

Saturday, March 07, 2009 9 comments

What a difference a few days makes

This is what things looked like Monday morning:



Just for grins, I tried the PhotoStitch software that came with my camera and it did a fairly good job of relieving me of the grunt work. I had to pull it into Photoslobber to scale the thing down, though (it was like 7000 pixels wide!).

We somehow ended up in a sort of warm slot during the Sunday snow — it stuck north, south, and east of us, but here it was melt-on-contact. Atlanta got a fair amount of snow, but here the kids were disappointed to see the ground clear and the school bus rolling in right on schedule.

Today, it’s sunny and 70, so I grabbed the camera and took a walk I’ll be posting shots in random order, on and off this week, as I think about it. Here’s two to get started. As always, click for a larger picture or hover for a little extra commentary.

DaffodilsDaffodils out front of the manor. There are several stands scattered around the place. I like ’em because they don’t need much attention and just do their thing as early as they can get away with.

As you will see later on, yellow seems to be the predominant color for early bloomers around here.

SproutsThe lettuce and spinach are sprouting! I have them sitting out on top of the cold frame; they won’t get overcooked that way and they’ll likely get some rain through the week. The onions are taking a little longer, but I dug up the big one out back — turned out to be eight onions growing together — and separated them into a bed out front. They happily established themselves through the winter.

I’m also planning on sowing some seeds, maybe this weekend, out back. I’ve been assured that the deer would chow down on anything I plant in the garden area out back… maybe I need some fence. I guess I'll stake out a couple of rows in the back where the kitchen water drains and go from there — not a lot of afternoon sun, but for cool-weather crops that might be a good thing.

Don’t forget to spring forward tomorrow… and a new FAR Future sub-series kicks off here Monday.

Thursday, January 15, 2009 8 comments

Full of Empty Buildings

Winter #3 has arrived on Planet Georgia. I bundled up and took a little walk around the block at lunch yesterday.



Empty parking lots, quiet shop floors… It could be a Saturday. But it was Wednesday at lunch, and this is one of several buildings, within a short walk of the office, that stand empty. Of the businesses within sight of the office, three of them went away in 2008. Sure, they might have found bigger or cheaper digs, but it’s more likely — since the buidings remain empty months later — that they simply faded away.



So what do developers think of this? Why, put up more office space, of course! This went up in the last year, down a cul-de-sac across from the office. The awnings and faux towers at the corners, in my mind, give it a sort of retail-ish look. It’s huge, it’s pretty… and empty as a politician’s promise.



Traffic during rush hour gets pretty horrendous along this stretch of road, that connects two major thoroughfares, so they’re working on four-laning it. Of course, that’s not stopping “them” from putting up more construction alongside. That’s a retail development on the left, so far with only one State Farm office and a restaurant “coming soon.” Just about all the buildings on the right are “medical office” space, with the last two buildings empty and the closer ones maybe half-occupied.

So this is what the beginning of a recession looks like… new buildings going up while the old ones are emptying out.

Sunday, November 23, 2008 11 comments

Ripples Above

I saw this formation on the way back from a meeting yesterday.

Cloud picture

It kind of got me wondering: do fish ever look up and see ripples on the surface of their water? What does it mean to them?

Saturday, November 08, 2008 9 comments

All Fall Down [UPDATED - new pic]

Autumn vistaClimate change seems to have pushed Planet Georgia’s peak color season from late October into early November. I posted some shots around Amicalola Falls exactly three years ago today, but I took these pictures a couple days ago and (much) closer to home — during my Thursday afternoon walk.

Looking north across a pasture, you can see color on the foothills… of course, the mountains themselves are hazed out.

Fall colors on a dirt roadThis is really the best time of year to be outside on Planet Georgia. The temps are pleasant, there’s still some light in the afternoon, and it’s just pretty when the sun filters through the trees. If you’re doing anything strenuous, there’s usually a breeze to cool you off.

The only downside is that the days continue to get shorter, and we’ll have the stark greyness of winter.

UPDATE: Because there’s more than one day to fall…

Green and yellow treesEven closer to home — just off the corner of the house, in fact — we have a couple really tall trees that were giving us 2/3 of a stop light. There’s a Japanese maple nearby that was deep red last week, but the wind cleared most of the leaves off. But who wants to stop?

Wednesday, October 08, 2008 5 comments

We Pause for a Cloud Break

I really didn’t want to write more about the Big Gooey Kablooey today. Fortunately, after a rainy day (the first in at least two weeks, so it has been seriously needed), God gave me something else to post this evening:

Clouds after rain

I was admiring the sculpted clouds among the puffballs, when I reached a place to pull off and get a picture. I see a big arm coming out of the sky, either pointing south or offering up The Mother of all Spliffs. :-P

Heh… I suppose that was appropriate, given that I thought of a Crosby, Stills, and Nash song when I saw the cloudscape:

How come I have to explain,
People are worth all the pain?
I just wanna see the love in your eyes
After the storm has passed you and gone.

Sunday, September 21, 2008 4 comments

Plants of the Moment

But first: happy b-day to both my parental units, Mom yesterday and Dad today!

Despite the drought, the plant life has managed to hold up reasonably well through the summer. Maybe the rainy spring gave them enough of a start.

Back in February, I mentioned diverting the kitchen and laundry drains into the back yard. We must have had a few seeds go down the drain — literally — because now there’s a clump of tomato plants springing up.

Mrs. Fetched was like, “Do you really want to let them grow?” Heck yes — I want to see what kind they are, if nothing else. I can’t blame her for moaning about it — the tomatoes have done very well this year and Mrs. Fetched’s mom is ready to yank her plants out of the ground so she doesn’t have to pick any more. It’s not just the tomatoes… her scupperdine vine got so laden it pulled down the tree she’d used for a trellis; I found a persimmon tree at the bottom of the driveway that’s weighed down pretty heavily; her fruit trees are doing very well too. Only one of my yellow pear plants survived, but it has done quite well despite not being staked… it just sprawls everywhere. But if these particular plants do well, and the frost holds off long enough, they'll be ripe around late October.

Flowers among kudzuOut for a walk on Thursday, I saw some wildflowers managing to grow among the kudzu.

The kudzu itself blooms, a pretty purple pyramid with a grape-y smell. But the blue blooms here were not of the kudzu; it was some other plant trying its luck among the tangle.

This kind of thing gives me a little hope. We’ve only begun to see how much our climate change is going to screw things up… but once we get out of the way, nature will adjust and fix things.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 13 comments

Flowers of FAR Manor: Allium (and a random road weed, and other stuff)

The allium is continuing to tantalize us with a verrrrry slow opening. But the color is looking nicer all the time. Given the size of the clusters — the largest is bigger than a baseball now — it could well be a Giganteum as IVG was hoping.

I ended up staking the thing because it was looked close to falling over — like I said before, the tallest one stands close to 6 feet tall, and the clusters are getting huge and heavy. It still has an onion/garlic smell.

Daughter Dearest is officially an international beauty — a guy came all the way from Norway (Norway!!!) to see her. He was happy to find that my old Mac G3 had Linux lurking on a partition somewhere, and immediately hooked up to the cluster (he said) under his bed back home. I’m having a great time driving DD nutz by describing him as “some guy she picked up on the Internet.” >8-} He doesn’t like MacOS, but at least he’s not a Doze-nut. I can live with that.

And finally:

Campaign signThis roadside weed caught my eye. The perfect campaign slogan immediately (and I mean immediately) came to mind: Republican Light — screwing a third less poor people than our regular Republican!

Such is Historic Forsyth Country these days. Be goplet or be gone.

Thursday, June 05, 2008 8 comments

Flowers of FAR Manor: Lilies

Mrs. Fetched was pleased to see these guys blooming out front.

Like the rhodo’s, they don’t have much modesty, sticking their IBs out for all to see.

[Another smellphone shot, taken 6/1]

Tuesday, June 03, 2008 2 comments

Flowers of FAR Manor: Thistle

To follow up on the alien onion, until I have something else to talk about, I will post pictures of the flowers currently blooming around FAR Manor this week.

ThistleThis thistle was actually in the pasture on the way to the chicken houses. It’s kind of like a rose — it has pretty flowers and nasty thorns — but as Mrs. Fetched puts it: “Cows won’t try to eat roses. They’ll eat thistles, and choke on ’em. You should have sprayed it after you took that picture.”

I suppose I could have peed on it.

[Taken with the smellphone, 5/31]

Friday, May 09, 2008 4 comments

One (or two) for the Road

A couple of cellphone shots to wrap up the week…

Besides the huckleberries, we have some higher blueberry bushes growing wild on the place. They run a couple weeks behind the huckleberries, for whatever reason. Last year, I was waiting for them to get ripe and then they… disappeared. I guess the birds were waiting too, and they got there first. I was bummed out, but hopeful that we’ll get some of them this year. Maybe I’ll get some cheese cloth or hang some tinfoil around the area to keep them out.

On the way home from work, I took a ride out a back road that I knew dead-ended at a river. I just wondered how far it went and what was out there. Looks like it might have been a bridge at one time.

Well, that’s the end of the road for the flower pix, at least for now. FAR Future episodes will be posted at least on the next two Mondays, and I should be able to make it three. I hope things will continue to work out that way.

Thursday, May 08, 2008 8 comments

The Fruited… whatever.

I started cleaning up around the front and side of the manor over the weekend, and re-discovered the huckleberry (blueberry) clump. The plants themselves are about twice the size they were last year, and promise to give much more than the handful of small (but quite sweet) fruit this time around. All I have to do is keep the birds away (fat chance).

Mrs. Fetched is pretty sure that we’re seeing them now because we had some timber people remove many/most of the pines around the manor grounds two summers ago (they were getting pine beetles & they paid us to take care of the problem). It makes sense.

I’m thinking that once they finish doing their thing this year, I'll dig up and transplant some of these to give them all some more room to grow. But prolific producers like this guy? I’ll leave completely undisturbed, to make sure they have the room they need. I don’t think I’ll worry about having nice regimented rows like many blueberry farms have; I’ll just give them all some space.

That was the side. Around front, across from the driveway, there’s a pretty good stand of blackberries. I debated about mowing them down, then thought better of it — I won’t have to walk very far to pick them. This stand should be good for half a gallon of berries.

I like to get at least two gallons of blackberries every year. Mrs. Fetched’s mom helps to make jelly & jam, and I got like 14 pints last year. When January comes around, I open a jar and spread some on toast… and remember just how dang hot it was on July 4 weekend when I was picking them. :-P

Friday, April 25, 2008 9 comments

Go Yard

New lawn mowerI was going to post this last night, but got tied up on a proposal for work. Weekend Cinema will come tomorrow. I hope to have a new FAR Future episode ready next week.

As I mentioned in the previous post, we did a lot of shopping last weekend to burn up the last of the tax refund. Our major purchase was a Cub Cadet lawn mower. Mrs. Fetched wanted self-propelled and a bagger. I wanted a Honda engine and a decent (i.e. not Wal-Mart) build quality. This fit the bill, and was pretty much in line with what we were seeing for similar mowers.

One of the nicer features is that you can control the drive speed by squeezing a lever, so we can easily vary the speed to match the part of the lawn we’re working on. Straight ahead? Let 'er rip! Stumps or landscaping? Ease it back. The swivel wheels up front allow tighter turns as well, and can be locked (although in our yard, turns are plenty so they’ll likely remain swinging).

ComposterOf course, with a bag that fills up two or three times, you need a place to empty it. I’ve been wanting to get a composting bin for a while, but I never saw any places that carried them locally and I balked at the $120 prices online. I’d contemplated just buying a big garbage can and cutting some holes in it, but Mrs. Fetched wanted to go to WalMart… and guess who is the only place in the free-range insane asylum that has composters? I sighed and coughed up $44 for the coffers in Bentonville.

I put it together that evening and plunked it down on top of the compost heap I’d had going for a while now. The next day, I pretty much filled it up with grass clippings. Two days later, it was only half full. It’s magic! I told The Boy that if he has any worms left over from fishing, to throw them in — they’ll help digest the fodder and make more worms. It’s just the right height to comfortably pee into (given the situation with the septic tank, the fewer flushes the better, and the composter can always use a little extra nitrogen).

Split seamOf course, the motto “if it’s WalMart, it must be junk” applies here too. This seam first popped loose when I was working the
composter into place. It popped open again on its own later. I’ve given up wasting my time trying to put it together for now; eventually, I’ll grab some flashing and a pop riveter and go for a more permanent fix.

I think I’ll try building another composter out of a big garbage can and see if I can get Mrs. Fetched’s mom to warm up to the idea. She loves her gardening, and free soil enrichments would make her happy.

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