Worms!

photo by kusine.

Did I ever tell you that I have worms?

Vermicomposting, they call it.

Worms aplenty, I tell you. They eat all the cucumber peels, tea leaves and coffee grounds. And other organic matter as well, if we happen to have green and leafy things in the house. And I can vouch for the fact that they make the most awesome fertilizer ever.

I always wanted to be more sustainable and organic when we got a house, and lo and behold! Here we are...

So now I have worms in my basement, and a regular composter in the back yard. Ground up tires as mulch, rain barrels for my down spouts. I even feed the squirrels birds organic bird seed.  Oh! and my husband is putting in a patio of recycled slate that I scored when driving by a house that was being renovated. Now I can't say he doesn't do anything in the yard.

For the first time in a long time we are not surrounded by pesticides and other chemicals.

My family is actually (literally) breathing a little easier.

One of the  good things about living in the  more "ahem"... blue-collar part of  fancy-pants Montclair, is that my neighbors all have small yards and not so much use for Chem-Lawn and all the  pesticides/fertilizers that go with that.

Back when we were renting, the landscapers were at the complex every week, and they were always using some sort of chemical on the plants. The grass was way greener than what I have now, but you couldn't let the children play on it, because of the toxic chemicals.

Well, ok you can't play on my grass now either, but that's because of all the glass embedded in the dirt. Oh, and also I don't really have "grass" per say, more like weeds that I chop down regularly with my push mower. But hey, if you were to look at my house from, say, 100 feet up? It would look like I had grass.

So yeah, Worms.

How can nothing be so tiring?

Nothing's happening here.

Unless you consider Gardening something. Which I don't. It's just the latest obsession since I actually have a garden now, whereas before I just wished I had one.

Wishing was a lot less back-breaking.

Soon I will tire of gardening, but not before I have everything set-up the way I want it... I hope.

There are still lots of boxes everywhere. Opening them up and finding spots for the contents has proved problematic, so my new plan is to just keep them piled up. How long do you think I get to use the "we just moved in" excuse, before it becomes clear that I'm quite slovenly and lazy?

Anyway, in brief, this is what I've been doing lately...

Daniel and I planted these, (from seeds!):

and I paid someone to plant these:

and then I hauled 1250 pounds of these in my little car
(and promptly suffered a relapse of my carpal tunnel from carrying all those bags of rocks):

Daniel picked these to plant:

And I picked out these:

And I really hope some of these plants are perennials, because I really don't want to have to go through this insane planting frenzy every year.

And basically, Daniel and I are just going back and forth to the garden center and Home Depot, and trying very hard not to be sarcastic and snarky to each other.

Oh, and we found a bird. Yup, you heard me... all those years of trying to get wayward animals to follow me home finally paid off. He flew out of the trees and landed on my arm.

Really.

No. Really.

I think his name should be Kismet, but I have a feeling it will end up being something like Bazooka, or Cybertron, or Sushi.

Here he is, the newest member of our family:

I think this little guy might actually keep me from wanting a dog for a little while.

In the midst of it all

When Daniel went to the old apartment the other day with his dad, they were reminiscing about all the things that happened while we lived there.

I'm not sure exactly how that conversation went, but the end result was a poem from Daniel listing his memories.

They left the poem for me to find when I went back to the apartment by myself.

Isn't it weird how love and pride makes your heart skip a beat?

Sometimes Daniel asks me if I think about him while he's at school, and I ask him back if he felt the hug that my heart was sending to his. When I read his poem, it felt like that...like my heart was reaching out of my body to find him.

I can't transcribe the poem right now - he's in the next room. But maybe tonight I'll post it for you.

The insanity continues around here. The apartment is almost done, I clean out the last of the trash today, and we scrub it from top to bottom on Memorial Day.

And then my parents come.

This is not a good time for me.

But once they leave, I can curl up into a ball, and then slowly emerge as a person again. I'm trying very hard for everyone's sakes to not get too miserable this time.

We'll see how that goes.

Catching up

Damn, this house is kicking my ass.

While I've been quiet over here, back in my non-virtual life we've taken down the trees in the backyard, bought a piano (a piano!)
installed rain barrels,
cleaned up a flood in the basement,
started composting with worms,
and mowed the lawn with my new push mower.

Did I mention I have 70-odd feet of hedges that I weeded and trimmed with a pair of manual hedge clippers. (well, until my neighbor saw me anyway and gave me his electric hedge trimmers - imagine how pathetic I must have looked for him to say, "No really, you keep 'em, I don't need them. You've been trimming that hedge for what? 3 hours already"

Yes, truly pathetic.

And I still have to clean out the old apartment.

Things look very suckish for the rest of May but I'll try to post a little more frequently regardless.

____________________________
On the kid front, during one of the many times Daniel announced that I hate him, he proclaimed that I was going to throw him out the window.

I swear, I have only ever thought about throwing him out the window, and even then in a purely metaphoric manner.

So when I protested that I was not going toss him headlong through pane-glass, he told me that I wanted to kill him.

Yes, this is what it's like in my house. If he had a British accent it could be a long lost Monty Python skit.

So of course I tell him that I don't want to kill him, that I love him and I want to protect him.

His comeback?

"You've already killed me."

"Daniel, what are you talking about?"

"Emotionally. You've already killed me emotionally many times."

That's when I swiped the cat's Prozac and curled into the fetal position. Because of course he's right. there have been many times that I have done exactly what my mother did to me. It's what I know. And it's what comes out of my mouth when I get stressed out.

This child will either make me a better person or give me a nervous breakdown. It seems to be his goal in life.