My little wormy friends
Early last summer I got introduced to vermicomposting through the people at Garbage Delight. It's this ingenious little idea of keeping a gambit of red wigglers in a rubbermaid container in your kitchen, allowing a person to compost inside. Since winter is 11 months of the year here, or so it feels mid-February, the idea of a worm bin to eat up small amounts of my veggie scraps sounded wonderful.
So I did it. I commited. I came home with a box of worms and declared that I was keeping them. Jordan was repulsed, but I convinced him with my charm and they have lived in our cupboard ever since, munching away.
After a long breakfast with Jordan today, I couldn't resist cleaning up my two perennial beds, and then - for I just couldn't stop! - my vegetable garden. We removed the excess straw mulch, poked around looking for signs of life from the bulbs and spread a years worth of decomposed compost from our outdoor bin on my little 12x12 veggie patch. With all of the Spring excitement, I could hear a chorus of red wigglers beckoning me from inside saying: "The winter is past and our bin is too full!"
How could I resist those cute little guys? So I pulled out the tarp, and I pulled out the buckets. I toppled the bin over and, there they were - the wiggly, slimy, garbage eating pets of mine. I remembered back to early last summer, when the idea of worms in my kitchen seemed ingenious and easy. But now I faced a grave problem.
I had 1000 little worms in a (too-wet) pile of compost and I wanted them out.
Now, don't get me wrong I like my pets. . . but not enough to pick each one out. So I thought and poked the pile for 20 minutes or so until I dumped the whole lot right back into their blue-bin home. Maybe next spring.
Oooh, ahhh - look at that great compost!
