Waiting

So, you know how you hear people say, "we need the rain."  Well, "we need the rain."  We've been waiting for this system that was supposed to move in yesterday and last for three days.  It got pushed back to today.  It looks like the south is getting it, and the west is getting it too.  But not here.  Our lawn is singed.  It hasn't rained since we moved from Hallandale.  And we've been wanting the rain, especially since we planted stuff.

It is starting to feel the way it feels before a storm.  It's breezy.  The air is heavy.  There's that quiet in the plants and trees swaying in the wind.  I'm sure there will be a point several months down the road when I'm blogging about the complete opposite.

I was searching the internets looking at rain barrels.  Then someone pointed out the fact that during the rainy season, more water comes off the downspouts then their big barrels can hold.  Also, when it rains that much, one doesn't need all that water for the plants, trees and lawn, and one can only wash the car so many times.

I was also looking at composters.  I was wondering about using worms or no worms.  I don't want to get into a big project, just maybe using lawn clippings and plant and tree trimmings at first.  Maybe raw vegetables.

Nothing like the compost we had going at my last place of employment.  We used big five gallon buckets for compost, then the various farm programs around the area would pick up the buckets from out back.  Those buckets were abused.  It was so much easier to just throw stuff into the bucket, rather than into the garbage bag that we would have to lug out at night.  For a long time, we were using these shitty biodegradable garbage bags that were made from corn and other plants.  These bags were so thin that they broke as soon as you put something in it.  We complained to the "management" about the garbage bags, and we were told that the bags were just a liner for the garbage can.

You know how difficult it is for short women to hoist a garbage can over a dumpster and not drop the garbage can into the dumpster?  It was not fun climbing into the dumpster at the end of the night to get a dirty trashcan out.

You know, there are rules for things that one should and shouldn't throw into the compost bucket.  While pretty much any food can be compostable, as well as latex gloves and paper, there are definitely things that you don't want to compost if you want to avoid certain scavengers.  Like meat and prepared food with oil in it.  Basically, any food we needed to throw out ended up in the compost buckets.

We got lists from the farms.  They would scold us and send us a list of everything we put in there that we weren't supposed to.  Including skewers.  We were supposed to break them up if we were going to put them in the bucket.  You can put fish in compost, but they didn't want them because it attracts rats and stuff.  Whenever we had old skewered sardines that we had to dispose of, one cook, Harley Chick, made a point to put them in the compost bucket.  She took pleasure in putting them in and waiting to see if we would get any flak for it.  After the very first list though, no one ever said anything about the sardines, just the bamboo skewers.

Waiting for rain for my yard and researching backyard composting and rain barrels.  Things I thought I would never do.