Yard Waste

Well, it's finally been nice enough out lately that Kennedy and I have been able to spend a lot of time in the yard. I now understand why people hire out their yardwork. However, this is giving me a great excuse to get a tan (you know, UV rays are evil now-a-days.)

Last time we worked in the yard, we had added a small patio off the dining room.

We're loving it, and the dogs are especially loving it. For some reason, it's a novelty to have a new door. Elvis likes to go out and check things out around that side of the yard, then immediately come back in.

Annnnnyhow, last week (or maybe the weekend before?) we decided to clear out some more stuff to make room for more grass. The entire backyard is pretty long and narrow, with much of it paved, so any extra grass space we can get is good!

Just for the sake of being dramatic, here's a photo of our side yard the day we moved in. I don't even remember it looking like that! But you can see all the overgrown bushes and weeds, and the greenhouse there in the corner of the yard.

That's the stuff that has been cleared out to date! We successfully took the greenhouse down without breaking it! It took a lot of patience (and cursing), but we did it.

Here is the yard now, sans greenhouse. Plus all the bushes are trimmed up. It looks twice as big! Since this photo was taken, we also took out the little corner "garden" (which was actually a barren patch of yard filled with pea gravel.) This afternoon, Kennedy and I tilled all the bare spots in the yard and threw down some grass seed, so we'll see how that goes.

If you're wondering about that little blue bin at the bottom, well, let me talk about it!

Meet my compost bin.

Thanks to the lovely bloggers at Young House Love, I was able to learn how easy it is to compost! If you're interested in starting your own, you can read how they did it here.

That photo was taken on day 1. Here's my compost bin on like day 9 or something. I don't really remember, but it was at least a week and a half later...

So apparently it takes a couple of months to compost stuff and use it as fertilizer. I'll be patient for now. A couple of days ago, I found some earthworms in the yard. I had heard these are great in a compost bin, so I picked them up and tossed them in there. I almost threw up, even with gardening gloves on, because worms and other bugs are just disgusting. 

I will say, that our garbage has reduced about 25-50% since I started this compost bin. I just keep a bucket under the kitchen sink and throw in all of my vegetable waste. I also put in egg shells and lint.

I think I'm turning into a hippie.