Let there be worms!

This spring I started reading Composting Inside and Out by Stephanie Davies. It was a free Kindle download that has forever changed my thinking about trash, gardening, and our earth's soil.

The book features 14 different composting methods, one of which is composting with worms, or vermiculture. As a mother of three little boys, I was immediately drawn to this method and, in turn, purchased a worm bin and a pound and a half of red wigglers. I guess my boys are still too young to share my fascination with the amazing work of the Eisenia foetida, but I'm hoping that they will in time.

I now keep a couple of large coffee cans on the kitchen counter to collect the worm food—almost any food scraps that are not meat or dairy. And each day I take off the lid of my bin to check on my little worms. Actually, some of them are now quite large! I'm amazed by how much stuff they can eat through in just a few days and how much they poop! And the poop is what it's all about, as it is full of nutrients that plants just love.

I have to admit that I murdered my first pound and a half of worms—inadvertently, of course. I overfed them (a common mistake) and left them out on the porch in the southeast Georgia heat for a week while we were on vacation. We returned to a smelly maggoty bin of dead worms. After cleaning up that horrible mess and giving myself a few weeks to recover from that stench, I now have a new crop of worms. Only this time I carefully ration out their vittles and keep the bin indoors where the temperature is much more temperate. (All was not lost with those worms that gave their lives for my initial experimentation, however. My plants have never looked healthier!)

Since my family creates more kitchen waste than the wigglers can eat, I've started a compost pile in the woods at the edge of our yard. I like that I am returning our food waste to the earth. And maybe, just maybe, I'll have a decent crop of something next year with all the compost!

Is your bathroom sink nastier than your toilet?

 In September of 2010, I was seven months pregnant with baby boy #3. Because of this pregnancy, I was hospitalized for a staph infection. In the course of my four days of being intravenously pumped full of antibiotics, test results indicated that the infection was MRSA—in my mind, the mother of all staff infections. That result launched my identity as a germaphobe!

 Since my stint in the hospital, my vigilance to eradicating harmful germs and bacteria in the home has slackened somewhat. Okay, a lot. But to this day, hydrogen peroxide is my primary household cleaner. I keep a spray bottle of it in the kitchen and bathrooms. To me, there is something very satisfying about the fizzing and foaming that you get with peroxide. As a nine-year-old girl, I remember my fascination with the way my newly pierced earlobes would foam up when I cleaned them with a peroxide-drenched cotton ball. I never got over that fascination.

In fact, the first time I sprayed the fixtures on one of my sinks and saw the surprisingly large amount of resulting foam, I couldn't wait to spray down the toilet and see all the foam that THAT surely would produce!

However, I was sorely disappointed. When, for the first time, I sprayed down the toilet in our hall bathroom, which is primarily used by little boys—very messy little boys, no foam. Nothing. And you can't tell me that, with three male toilet users in my home, my toilets are cleaner than my sinks! I've done a little poking around to figure out why my toilets won't fizz and have only determined that apparently something builds up on my sinks (and doesn't build up on my toilets) that reacts with the peroxide. My guess is that it is saliva related.

Do me a little favor, would you? Try this experiment in your home with a spray bottle of peroxide. If you have different results than mine, please let me know.

Oh, and if you are interested in the different uses of hydrogen peroxide, Google it. Turns out that I'm not the only one out there with a somewhat strange obsession with what causes peroxide to fizz.

Holidays=lazy days?

Happy New Year! Hope you all had a holiday season that wasn't too terribly hectic. At the very least, I hope you were able to slow down enough to enjoy what Christmas and the new year are all about.

Somehow, I found myself in a lazy-day state of mind this year when it came to the holidays. But it wasn't my usual bah humbug attitude toward the megaconsumerism of the holidays that slowed me down. No, this year what slowed me down was my desire to drink in every second of what makes the holidays special.

Primarily that involved time with my kiddos. I sat my happy butt down on the couch for way more children's shows than I care to watch. Sure, I could have spent that time working or getting chores done around the house, but there's nothing special about that time. It can't be compared to my two-year-old's kisses or the crazy antics of my four-year-old. The thought of it ten years from now won't give me a happy, warm feeling.

However, I will fondly remember being at home with three sweet little boys, eating popcorn and drinking hot chocolate as we watched Christmas programs on TV, including a favorite I grew up with, "Emmett Otter's Christmas." I'll remember the boys' seeming inability to get enough of me (gotta enjoy THAT while it lasts!). Their cuddles and happy faces in the glow of the Christmas tree light. Their excitement over wrapping up things they made in pre-school to give to their grandparents. I'll remember my one-year-old wallowing and drooling all over me when I lay down on the living room floor.

And even though I did succeed in meeting my work deadline, my house is a wreck, my Christmas cards went out late, and I did not once write an entry in this blog. That's OK. I won't remember those things anyway. But I do hope that this upcoming Christmas I'll be able to once again focus on what is important. Because it sure was nice.