Compost: It's green, but it sure is ugly.

On this snowy day in January, I am at home cleaning my house and doing chores and taking the occasional break to geek out on the computer.  My friend's daughter is coming home on the bus with my kids after school, so I figure it's high time to get rid of the compost situation growing on my kitchen counter.  It's getting ugly.

Our house is on a one-acre lot, and both sides of the lot are very brushy and overgrown and very conducive to composting.  I have a little area bordered with chicken wire with stakes in the corners to hold it up, and I toss in all of our kitchen scraps, fireplace ashes, and some yard waste in there throughout the year.

My compost system is as follows:  I have an antique enamelware pee-bucket with a lid (yep, I said pee-bucket) on the counter, and all of my appropriate food scraps go in the bucket. The full bucket then gets either taken right out to the compost pile, or depending on how busy I am in the house I may empty it into a big kitty-litter bucket that I keep on the back porch.  Then when that bucket is full, it gets taken out and dumped on the pile.  Saves us a lot of garbage, and I have peace of mind knowing that my kitchen scraps are not sitting in an impermeable plastic bag somewhere, not biodegrading as they should.  Yay, me!

There are a lot of specifics about composting - what you're supposed to compost and what you're not, turning, temperature, nitrogen, ratios, etc.  I like to call MY way of composting The Lazy Person's Compost System.  I dump it on, it rots.  Maybe next year I stir it up and spread it in the garden (my tomato plants get monstrous!).  Hey, my system works.  And at least I'm composting at all.

But then it gets cold out.  Then frosty.  Then frigid.  Then frozen tundra crispy nose-hair cold.  Yay, let's go dump the compost!  NOT.  So naturally, I end up with a full bucket on the back porch, a full bucket on the kitchen counter, and then I might even grab another container and start filling that.  This will get transferred to the back porch when it's full, too, keep it nice and cold.  Yuck, right?  You betcha. 

Again, today I am home doing chores.  Part of cleaning the kitchen is dealing with what my husband affectionately calls The Rot Bowl.  To begin, I empty the ashes from wood-burning stove into a paper grocery bag, then pile some old bread and banana peels and stuff on top of the ashes.  My intention is to get all geared up in boots and coat and heavy gloves, and take this beast out to the pile where it belongs. 

But I haven't.  It's on the back porch.  And it's stinky.  I'd like to think that when the kids get home from school I can bribe the boy to go dump it for me by paying him 2 bucks or something.  But he's way smarter than that.  I'm on my own. Buck up and get out there, Bonnie.

Remind me again why I compost?  Hmmpf.  I mean...YAY, I LOVE IT!  GO GREEN!