Go Ahead, call me a hippy

...My husband does! :)

Every time I start telling him about something new I want to try he says, "uh, oh, here we go again, I'm getting nervous!"

Our latest adventure has been COMPOSTING and RECYCLING! A friend of mine here lived in Germany for a while and over there everyone composts and recycles. The trash pick up didn't come very often so you had to. So, she showed me how easy it was and since we both have gardens as well, I figured, why not? I dragged Justin to Sam's with me to get the bin and oversaw him putting it together for me (he's such a sweet husband!). I browsed the web for a list of things you can compost and lo and behold you can compost most anything!!

I had some hay and laid it on the bottom and started filling it up with table scraps (everything but dairy, meat, bones), shredded junk mail (the non-glossy paper), dried grass clippings, a shovel of garden dirt, and a bunch of other stuff and sprayed some water in it. My new phrase is, "Don't throw that away honey, it CAN LIVE AGAIN!" ha! There is some science to composting, like having a good mix of nitrogen and carbon products (just google how to compost, and you can read from a billion different sites about that). It'll take about 2 months before I see any actual compost, but by then I can start adding it to my garden, making the soil good and rich for next year. And you know, the crazy thing is it doesn't stink at all. When I take the lid off of the bin, there is no smell. That is amazing!

We have noticed since we've been recycling and putting stuff in the compost bin, our trash is significantly decreased.... and it would be even less if we had one less kid in diapers....

So now Justin can add composting and recycling to his long list of reasons why I'm his hippy wife... haha!

The compost bin in the backyard

So far this year the garden has done well. Last year by this time I had killed 4 tomato plants. ha ha!! All 6 plants have survived this year and the cherry tomato plants on the deck have baby tomatoes growing. I'm so excited to eat them. This picture is a view from our upstairs window. Click on the picture for a large view.

I have several herb plants on the deck and so yesterday I harvested them before they got too big and flowered and decided to dry them. Here they are bunched up.

I hung them in paper bags on the wall in the garage... we'll see how it goes, I've never tried drying herbs before. I read you can do it in the oven, but seems like a waste of energy and it'll make the house hot. If it works, next year I will plant a lot more herbs so I can dry a bunch. We use herbs frequently in our cooking.

This hippy chick must get dinner cooking, so over and out blog friends! :-)