Giving Worms Another Go

I tried Vermiposting (composting with worms) once before but they died. Last month the kids were able to participate in a workshop for Earth Day where they were given a few worms. We brought them home, bought a bin, drilled holes etc. Each week I feed the worms and put in more bedding, making sure to sprinkle with a bit of water to keep it all moist.

I think they died again.

The worms we were given were small so they may just be eluding detection. The food is being eaten by something so who knows maybe I am just being weird. I think I may just bite the bullet and buy a pound of red wigglers from a local lady we sells them by the pound. I can just add them in. Even if the original worms did survive the new worms won't harm them and I can use more of my kitchen scraps for compost.

I like worms. They don't take much time at all. Once a week I give them some love (food scraps, newspaper bedding and sprinkles of water) and for the rest of it they remain to themselves.

I will keep trying. There must be something I am not doing right, or maybe just some worms I am not seeing.

TV Culture

My morning started with a 8 year old boy reduced to tears and clutching his ear. He and his sister have had a doozy of a head cold for the last four days so it didn't surprise me that he had developed an ear infection. I tried drops that we had here at the house but judging from his cries they were not working so off to the walk in clinic we went.

The wait was long, over an hour but for the forty or so chairs that were filled with bodies the wait wasn't so bad. They had their television. A large screen tv was mounted to the wall, locked on a particular channel (not even a Canadian one) and everyone was content to stare up at it for hours on end, not matter what ridiculous day time program was running. I also noticed most of the people were middle aged and younger.

The same was true for the waiting room at the hospital when I went in for my surgery last week. That time I did watch, but who could blame me, my favourite show Road To Avonlea was on. Not as many people paid attention in that waiting room though. The average age must have been over 55 (myself the only exception). I wonder if it's a generational thing. Because anyone in the forties or under would have grown up with television, even raised their own kids with the devise as babysitter.

I love movies, and the odd program and for 4 years we lived without cable preferring to search out certain shows on the internet. Over recent years our rooster of preferred shows kept getting longer and longer. Television stations were adding innumerable programs to their websites allowing us to watch what we wanted, when we wanted and our daily average kept getting higher and higher. When we moved here we caved under the pressure of climbing bandwidth charges from our internet provider and ordered cable.

I try to keep TV watching at bay but admit I am weak. I could do better. In some ways I wish I could go back to four years ago when we ditched cable with defiance and gave the kids a book when they said they were bored. To be honest, I like TV but it concerns me that doctors waiting rooms, restaurants and mini vans are becoming acceptable places for screen time. What happened to the good old game of "I spy" while waiting for the doctor? Or pre-planning and bringing a book? Maybe, just maybe we could also become better at talking to each other, instead of looking up in the corner slack-jawed and bug-eyed.

We are one step closer to turning into that Wall-E movie, cruising around on hovering chairs, illumiinated screens two inches from our faces and a gigantic soda at our side. When will enough be enough?

Housekeeping

This post is a routine housekeeping, or in other words cleaning bits of this and that to make everything look tidy and clean. Here is my life all tidy and clean.

I am going to the hospital on Wednesday for a long awaited surgery. I have been suffering with a rather large kidney stone for over a year now. It is not 'long awaited' because of lack of medical care available but rather my own stubbornness for not looking into the source of my pain. I pushed passed it, moved on and ignored the symptoms for many months. I wanted to see a doctor in the fall but so much of our time was taken up in house hunting, packing and other home related matters. It was shortly after we moved that I realized I could not postpone it any longer.

Since I found out surgery was eminent, I went to great pains to get the garden beds in and planted. I may be out of commission for a week or so, depending on recovery so I don't need to worry about the gardens and planting schedules. This week I am also focusing on house chores, and some of the tasks I don't get to often (like vacuuming the couch) so that I can leave them for weeks until I feel energetic enough to take them on.

Things might be rather quiet here on the blog front as well. I have joined an online writer's critique group where all five of us are actively writing and posting an critiquing each other's work-in-progress. This is a huge undertaking which require a lot of commitment on my part but it is something I see as worth while. I have been working on this recent novel (a mystery) since August and consider myself about half way through. Too often I push my writing to the side for the sake of home stuff that need tending to. I am hoping that this critique group will keep me on track, focused and goal oriented.

I still plan to blog and do my other homesteading stuff but for the next bit I am focusing on my recovery and my book.

These Hands

I spend a lot of time working with my hands and this passed weekend was no different. I received 6 cubic yards of top soil to fill my raised garden beds with. That's a lot of shoveling, pulling and dumping. Each section of garden (10 ft by 4 feet) took 6 to 8 trips to fill. Each trip with the wagon took about 15 shovelfuls to prepare and one big push to get the container to spill over into the garden beds. That's 120 shovelfuls for each raised bed, and 1320 shovelfuls for the whole garden.



I received some help from the kids and hubby but I think even they knew, this was my baby. I did the lioness' share. I kept going when my legs begged me to stop. I kept shoveling when the blister formed on my palm. I needed to get this done. I need to plant roots at this house or it will never feel like a home.



I did it. I filled the beds with topsoil to spare and now I can start planting. It feels good to be so 'accomplished'.




This whole time, after the blister formed and I still kept pushing on, I was thinking about my hands and how much they have helped me accomplish. I've held my babies in these hands and showed them they were loved. I've held my husband's hand when he was in a coma and encourage him to come back to us. I've planted tiny seeds and gave them room and water so they could flourish and provide us with food. I have hugged friends in need, and wiped away the tears I cried for those I could not hug. I've touched trees in the forest, pick up someone else' litter and rushed spiders outside.

My hands wash dishes, prepare food, fold laundry and clean floors. My hands help me write this blog and my novel, which are both huge sources of pride for me. My hands hold books and turn pages so that I may learn and grow as a person. Right now I have a cat curled up in my arms with one hand petting her and the other typing away.

I am proud of these hands, each line and future callous, each dry patch and wrinkle. These hands do many things and they are a testament to how much I have truly lived.

On My Mind...

Some days it's two steps forward one step back and that is the way it has been for us lately, until yesterday.

Yesterday was so beautiful and warm that when my husband came home from work he asked if I wanted to finish building our raised beds. That is exactly what I was hoping he'd say. We have been trying to get these raised beds together for weeks but our efforts have been thwarted by rain, holidays, prior commitments and equipment failure. We did manage to get the 3 8x4 beds done and painted but that was it.

Yesterday we hit a grove. We finished the other 8 beds (10x4). I drilled holes while my husband transported the boards outside. At about the same time the drilling was done, he had finished constructing one of the beds, so we moved it into place and I started painting them while he kept building them. Took us about two hours and they are done.



This picture is roughly the formation I want them in. 4 L brackets around 3 tightly spaced beds in the middle. There will be enough room for a wheelbarrow to get through and I will be able to reach all sides. It's 416 sq ft of garden space. It's HUGE! Can't wait to get my fingernails dirty. I have seedlings that are just itching to get outside.

I am not sure I want them in this particular spot. I will probably have to move them farther back into the yard. We plan to reconfigure the deck and patio in a year or two so I would hate to go through all this work just to have to move them next year. A little bit of planning now with save me a gigantic headache later.

That's what's on my mind...