It's a dreary day, so let's talk composting!

The only thing that could make this view any more dreary would be if there was still ice in the water!  But there isn't, so we'll just have to accept it as a chilly, wavy, foggy May day on Lake Superior.

Something that helped clear the dreariness was being invited to friends this afternoon to try out their Hawaiian sweet bread made in their new bread machine.  I've always seen the HSB in stores but never tried it.  Now, however, I think I might also need a bread machine.  The sad part is that I've had two in my past--one mine, one my mother's--and they both went in yard sales at some point in time.  I'm justifying my possible purchase with the thought that they have improved them since my mid-1990's version.  The bread was made even better with two kinds of jellies - one was strawberry (I think) and the other was made from some kind of peppers, so it had a kind of salsa feel to it, but sweet.  Thanks for sharing!

And for one last quest for color we drove by the big daffodil fields here in Port Wing.  It looks like there is one long row already blooming but soon this whole field will be yellow and white with daffodils.  I've heard the story from time to time about how this field of flowers came to be, but maybe I'll get it nailed down by the time I post the next picture with more in bloom.

And now for composting.  We started composting in a semi-serious way in Minneapolis about 10 years ago.  The students in Leann's school were studying composting, and Leann, as their media specialist and resource person, got involved in helping them by acquiring red wigglers from one of her science supply sources. (Who ever said librarians just read books!) And then she got a bagful of red wigglers for us and our new recycling container we bought through Hennepin County and had just started using. (I'm only posting the link to show that you can even get red wigglers from Amazon!  The pictures are a little much.) 

She also brought home a big poster, carefully printed in first grade words by one of their first grade teachers showing what can and can't be posted.  Perhaps that poster is still hanging in the garage of our Minneapolis house...that we moved out of two years ago.  Or perhaps not.

We liked this compost container because we could layer the compostable items from the top, add the red wigglers sometime in the summer to go to work on the compost, and "Black Gold" (as Leann called it back then) could be dug out of slats at the bottom of the container.  And the covers on the top kept the raccoons out!  

So today I saw this cool infographic posted by Lifehacker on Facebook.  I like Lifehacker because they have "hacks" or helpful hints on all kinds of topics.  Today one of their posts was this composting infographic.  I'm only posting a portion of it here but you can click the link to see the whole thing.  

Some things surprised me - fireplace ashes okay but coal/charcoal ash not okay, egg shells are good but eggs are not good, and I just dumped a container of old/hidden Greek yogurt in our compost bin.  Dairy - not good!  Up here I think we have wildlife that also help themselves to our compost offerings, but it's far away from the house so we don't care who comes.

And if you click on the link to see the whole graphic, you'll see that they also call it "Mining Black Gold," so I guess Leann wasn't the only one with the good idea!

Happy composting!