Mission Accomplished!!

A Year In The Garden: Incredible Beauty, Explosive Sex and Violent Death in One Suburban Backyard

Gardening Book Is Combination of Eye-Popping Photography, Instructive How-To and Poetic Observation

Result of year-long project is love letter to nature, family and growing things

Most year-long experiments are extraordinary sacrifices of inconvenience and toil – living biblically, eating locally or cooking an entirely new recipe every day. Rebecca Palumbo did something that one third of Americans might accomplish without any cost or resources, but that has never been done before. Beginning on the first day of spring and concluding on the last day of winter, she photographed, observed and wrote about the growth and evolution, the sex, the beauty, the violence – the entire Other World – right outside her door.

Written in exquisite detail and beautifully photographed, A Year In The Garden: Incredible Beauty, Explosive Sex and Violent Death in One Suburban Backyard (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CJGG79Q – $14.95) documents an average Midwest (Zone 5, for those keeping track) suburban garden for an entire lunisolar year. Through Damn Rabbits, prolific insects, disappointing watermelons and more, readers will not only learn how to divide perennials, build chicken-wire fence panels and control powdery mildew, they will learn how life in the garden mirrors real life, including the joy of a happy marriage, the recovery of the author’s son from depression and her daughter’s approaching adulthood. The book, jam-packed with educational information, reverent, telescopic observations and just plain fun, is truly a window into the soul of a gardener.

Gardeners will love this book to watch the progression of each plant and bed as it unfolds in photographs. They will learn and reinforce concepts of plant care, garden care and pest repellents. For many, the most important tool will be the comparison of their own garden’s progression to the author’s garden.

Hope-to-be-gardeners will enjoy planning the possibilities for their own yards. Learning curves will be shortened as they learn from these successes and mistakes. Because of the photographs, they will truly understand the cycles of a garden and set reasonable expectations for their own, including their own time commitment to achieve the desired results. They will get a true sense of what it means to really be a Gardener, to feel that your slice of earth is a little part of the vastness of this universe, that the garden is not just about seeds and weeds, but that it’s about thought processes and personal growth.

Apartment and city dwellers and those who can’t garden will revel in this as it transports the reader into the garden, exquisitely, throughout the year. There is no need to sigh over asphalt, sealed windows or aged knees – reading this memoir and viewing the photographs will take them right into the garden – throughout the year. Each chapter is a mini-vacation to a paradise and for the reader, that paradise becomes theirs. They will get an understanding that life in the garden is mirrored by life outside, that a small garden is a microcosm of the world at large.

Beyond the “nuts and bolts”, readers will also find an almost divine experience in the verbalization of the spirituality we all feel when we’re in the garden. This book hits so many nerves – the need for nature, the need to grow things, the need to solve problems as we dig in the soil.

Since Rebecca Rollins Palumbo could hold a trowel, she has been gardening – first as her mother’s oft-reluctant assistant and now for her own joy and satisfaction. She has gardened in the frustrating full shade off the patio of her first apartment, in the troublesome full shade of her first house and now in a perfect combination of sun and shade in her present home, the subject of this book. She wrote a column about nature and gardening for the Chicago Tribune. She is a certified Master Gardener and her garden is a Certified Wildlife Habitat.

Rebecca earned a Bachelor of Art from Northern Illinois University with a concentration in photography and a strong emphasis in English and writing. She is Creative Director of Rollins Palumbo Creative, a design and advertising firm in Chicagoland.  She resides in Tinley Park, Illinois, a southwestern suburb of Chicago, with her husband, Tony, two “young adult” children, two dogs and a betta fish named Sundance.

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Fighting the Mean Reds

Somedays, you just wake up crabby. And cranky. And out of sorts. It can’t be explained away, it can’t be justified, it can’t be pinpointed. Nothing is really wrong, but absolutely nothing is right either. A trip to the health club and 45 minutes of solid swimming helps for a short time – a very short time. And then you’re right back to Cantankerous Town.

At about 3 pm, I grabbed a rake to clean up a little, get a little sunshine, blow out the crabbies. I raked part of the backyard the dogs seem to like the most and then headed to the front to put the rake away. Plastic bags and trash was caught in the stems and branches in the grasses bed next to the driveway, so I leaned over and gathered those up, throwing them in the garbage. Since I had the rake in hand anyway, I grabbed the big pruners from the garage and cut down all the dead coneflower, pulled out the dried zinnias, chopped down the withered mums and took the spyria down to the ground, then raked all this up and dropped it into the yard waste bin, wishing for a chipper so I could chop this into instant mulch. (note to self: start looking at chippers). Daffodils, daffodils and more daffodils were revealed in all their lime green glory, fresh, tender lamb’s ear emerged from the ashy remains of last year and the tiniest hint of mums broke ground.

That was all; I was finished for the day. But – the trumpet vine needed pruning, I remembered, and quickly. It really should have been done in the fall. Dead vines came tumbling, sometimes by themselves but mostly with alot of help. The main stem, thick and green, holds many possibilities for dozens and dozens of blooms this summer; this is its leaping year. The dried clematis on the neighboring trellis had already fallen and it just needed a few quick snaps to separate it from the healthy stems. I lugged it around to the side of the house, settling it next to the honey locust. Tony and I will work together to get that nestled into the crotch of that tree, useful shelter and nesting material for the birds.

The side of the house, between the grasses bed and the backyard, is my focus for this year. It is a confusing spot, as our garbage cans sit here, right along the main entrance to our yard. Yick. I’d like to screen them somehow, open the flagstone path wider so we walk around them instead of right beside them. I stood at the corner of the house and stared, willing a plan to form in my mind. Normally, I visualize a blank slate and start from, as it were, absolute scratch. That is difficult here as the area is a challenge of hardscape: sidewalk, flagstone and brick. And then there is the pile of “stuff” cleaned out of the basement but not yet thrown away – tubing, pvc, draintile and more. Tony wants me to go through it and I never think of it on garbage day. I must really make a note.

The bed between house and sidewalk and filled with weglia bushes is narrow, about 18″. Those bushes grow and are hacked back, grow and get hacked back and then grow again. They are the sturdiest shrubs I’ve ever seen. After seeing an espalier, I have fantasies of training a pear tree or grapes perhaps on wires. This is truly the perfect spot, very sunny and warm but protected from harsh winds. I thought again about ripping out those weglias and buying grape vines, thought about drilling anchors into the brick (I hear my brother cringing) and threading wires, spending years guiding and pruning vines into place. I thought about how unfortunate it was that these weglias, really made to go big, were forced into this tiny spot. I wondered if there was any way I could transplant 20+ year-old bushes, with most of their root system under concrete, and have them survive. I began pruning the first bush, cutting back all the branches currently spilling onto the sidewalk, cutting back all the smaller branches, cutting down the top, thinning out the old stems. And then I had a Revelation.

The weglias are so sturdy and grow so well here, even hacked back at least twice a year. They are truly beautiful, covered with purpley-pink bells in the summer. I could “fake” an espalier here, with these bushes! No grapes or pears, alas, but no heartbreak over lost shrubs and absolutely no aggravation of watering, watering and watering to establish a new root system in this confining space. I grabbed the pruners and cut the branches near the sidewalk down to the ground. Then I sheared off all the branches growing towards the sidewalk, leaving only branches growing straight up or out to the sides. I sat on the concrete, bumping along the sidewalk, bush by bush. My butt got very cold. At the finish, except for the first bush which was pruned without espalier thoughts, I could already see the bones for the future, I could imagine the stems reaching up along the brick, covering this whole wall with green and purple and pink.

I just love it when I figure things out.

I bundled up all the branches and carried them to the Neither Here Nor There bed, creating a brush pile for birds (but it will probably help Damn Rabbits too – dash it all). I swept and tossed, threw rocks back into beds, put the tools away.

Back in the house, hours after my first foray out, Tony asks if I had a good afternoon. Yes. Indeed I did.

Flirting with Anaphylactic Shock

It seemed like a simple enough task. As usual, we waited until all the lightbulbs in the front of the house had burnt out before we replaced any of them. After all, we still had a dim haze of light coming from the single bulb feebly burning on the far side of the garage. Why rush?

Neatnik Neighbor breathed, I’m sure, a sigh of relief as I walked out to the front of the house with an arm full of energy-efficient light bulbs. No longer would he have to look at that annoying crooked light pattern. I secretly think he marks the day and time he installs his own bulbs, then keeps careful track of every minute they burn so he is at the ready, replacement in hand, when they expire.

Without looking up, I stuck my hand into the first fixture, unscrewed the old bulb and screwed in the new one, being very careful not to overtighten. I am of the generation that played with the mercury from broken thermometers on the bathroom tile, breaking it into little silver balls and then pooling it into larger puddles and then doing it all over again. But one of those bulbs snapped in my hand recently and I now realize that’s not the healthiest situation (But I do wonder why there aren’t more of us with shattered livers and shrinking brains caused by playing with those magical silver balls).

On the third bulb, I missed the socket completely – twice – and had to look up. And saw a golfball-sized wasp nest. Gracious! I shrank back instinctively, but then remembered wasps are dormant in the cold.

I knocked the nest onto the ground with the edge of the bulb and then screwed in the bulb. A thought occurred to me and I looked in the other two fixtures. Yep, nests in both of them as well, exactly where I’d carelessly and heedlessly shoved my hand.

Thank heavens that last bulb flickered out on cold, crisp day. If we were more vigilant about our bulb-changing, if I were indeed a Neatnik, the wasps might have been the end of me. At least it wouldn’t be death by broken thermometer.

The Hermans Host A Rave

on the basement stairs landing, the Hermans home

hold the tomatoes and onions

mosh pit

the break dancer. hisher name is Herman.

The worm factory was assembled and I left for Florida the next morning – which was probably the very best thing that could have happened to those worms, given my curiosity and maternal feelings. They were able to settle in, dark and damp, undisturbed and unruffled, for an entire week.

Of course, when I got back, the temptation was just too overwhelming. When I opened the basement door, the first thing that hit me was the odor. More specifically, the lack of it. While it’s all well and good to read on every vermicomposting website that there is virtually no odor, we do well to take these claims with a grain of salt. (Much like I lifted my brow incredulously when reading the claim that if I just avoided bananas, I could lose 20 lbs in one week. Who eats that many bananas in the first place?)

Here, the claims were true. There was the faintest wisp of earthiness in the air, a fleeting vapor of a fresh soil smell, but that soon vanished, leaving me to wonder if it was just the basement door being closed for a week – or my imagination. With Tony beside me, we opened the lid on the farm.

It was still full of worms. (Tony headed back up the stairs quickly.) There was a sprinkling of castings on top of the heap of organic material, looking like caraway seeds tossed into the mix. “Just four weeks to get through a tray?” I wondered. It seemed to me that these little girlguys had a great deal to chew through in the three remaining weeks and it also seemed that their pace was not fast enough. “I must have lazy worms,” I sighed. I popped the lid back on, shut off the light and silently urged them not to be slackers, to be real red wigglers and to make me proud.

I waited another two weeks, going to great lengths to ignore the farm sitting on the landing each and every time I went into the basement, never opening the lid. The suspense really was killing me. I longed to check their progress nearly every day. My self-control was astonishing.

I was making myself proud.

Today, three weeks after they were dumped into their new home, full of brussel sprout and shredded paper possibilities, I checked again.

Wow. Slackers they are not. After the initial lull, these worms have put on the full-court press. As light poured into the tray, little heads lifted and swayed back and forth. I could almost sense eyes (if they had any) squinting as they were roused from this bacchanalia, groping for that red solo cup and clutching sore heads. What a party indeed.

Worm castings were flung hither and yon, with a substantial decrease in the size of the original material. The pile has shrunk dramatically. Worms crawled and crept and slithered; some alone, like the weird kid in the kitchen who’s caught going through the cabinets, but most tangled in a heap of slime, like the mosh pit in the living room, all dancing so closely together, bumping and pushing, that they become covered in each other’s sweat (Well, yes, I know it’s a gross thought, but I’m sure it’s happened to you at some point in your life. Unless you were the weird kid in the kitchen).

A smaller worm sat on the edge of the lifted lid, waving hisher tiny body in the air, the break dancer of the group. I could plainly see that they did not like the onions (they did worry about bad breath!) and they have not touched the tomatoes either. Perhaps they are continental and eat their salad last. Wait – this whole thing is salad.

The timing estimated by Uncle Jim’s nephew seems dead on. If they are this far along in three weeks of a non-stop whirlwind of dark, damp indulgence, one more week just ought to do it. I’ll add a new tray of carrot peels, potato peels, broccoli peels, onion peels (we seem to have a great deal of peels, don’t we?) next weekend. The worms will migrate up to the this new tray to continue the party with fresh supplies. They’ll leave behind a pile of poop, tiny bits and pieces of uneaten food and a whole lot of pee.

Kinda reminds me of Jersey Shore. Especially since worms look a lot like Snooki.

Yes, Wonderful Things!

daffodils up next to the driveway

hyacinth emerging

tulip sprouting

daffodils next to the house

clematis falling

foxglove unfurling

daffodils in the pin oak bed

sedum rosettes

Survivor!

Today, this first day of March, I’m changing my attitude. I’m going to stop wishing for two feet of snow. I’m going to stop dreaming of knee-deep drifts, stop fantasizing about ice-covered branches, stop hoping for front lawns askew with snowmen and stop thinking of slick sled runs.

It’s just too darn late. And the garden is just too darn early. Things are happening at an incredible pace, weeks and weeks before they did last year. The garden is waking up, much sooner than usual. The shoots are shooting, the buds are buddings, the greens are greening. I find myself daydreaming about soil, seeds and plant arrangements, transplanting, dividing and cutting back more and more. The itch to get out there is growing.

I’m too far gone to embrace snow now.

The daffodils in that toasty microclimate next to the house are taller and bushier today, March 1, than they were on the first day of spring last year. The buds are in full development. I can feel the thickness inside the outer covering, thin torpedos filled with a burst of yellow petals that should come well before the first day of spring this year.

Now I see that daffodils are up everywhere – in the front perennial beds, in the bed next to the driveway. They are up inches already, brave even in the face of this incredible weather. The hyacinth is up too, pointed little green cones poking through the dirt. The tulips unfurl, tiny funnels of emerald rimmed with red.

Last year’s clematis sags from the front trellis, no longer sheltering sparrows, just brown and dried and tangled. It needs to be cut down and thrown into the honey locust so the sparrows can re-establish their homestead.

Foxglove in the back beds has tender, tiny green leaves curling out of the center, harbinger of a good healthy crops of bells this summer. The new butterfly bed in back is decidedly not sprouting, there is little green. I think that this is the year it will sleep – and suddenly, a modest line of teeny sedum rosettes proves me wrong.

And shockingly – because they are always the last – the daffodils in the pin oak bed, up inches already, completely disregarding the calendar and taking their cue from weather alone. Most amazing – and indeed wonderful.

At the pond, dead leaves covering the netting almost entirely, I muse about the goldfish. We did have a few (just a few, very few) of below freezing days, most likely freezing the whole 16″ ish deep. Fish sticks, I figured, would be on the menu for spring. Suddenly here too, a surprise. At least one goldfish has made it through, unscathed. I see the flash of gold in a clear spot, wavering back and forth. “Well, look at lucky you,” I think. “How many of there are you down there?” I suddenly feel like the diver in “Goliath Awaits,” communicating with underwater survivors of uncertain attitude.

My hands are getting cold – it is not quite balmy spring yet. A cold mist is settling in, veiling me in a chill. It is only March 1, we must remind ourselves.

And two feet of snow really wouldn’t be that bad.

They’re Heeerrrre!

Coconut Coir Stew

Processed Brussel Sprouts

The First Tray ready for Hermans

The Hermans in their new home!

First tray with shredded paper

completely assembled – one tray in place

Just after the phone call to the nephew

the BOX!! the BOX!! the BOX!!!

“Live Product” – I felt so EXOTIC!!

Worms on the right in the newspaper

Bag o’ worms

Worms in their temporary home

One of the rebels, trying to escape

The worms were expected to arrive either Wednesday or Thursday. As the weather has been cold, I was hoping against hope that I’d be home when the postman arrived so the poor things wouldn’t have to sit out in the cold. The last thing I wanted was a box of frozen little worm carcasses on my front porch.

On Wednesday, I heard the familiar starting and stopping of the postal truck and looked out of (okay, actually ran to) the front window. When the postman stopped the truck, got out of the seat and began to rummage in the backseat, I was practically hopping up and down. I opened the front door as he turned with a big brown box in hand and started up the drive. He saw me on the porch and smiled. “This says ‘Live Product’ here,” he said.

“It’s worms!” I replied. “For indoor composting.” He lifted his eyebrows in a most compassionate way – perhaps thinking of all the times I’ve walked down to get the mail from him in purple latex gloves and silly hat. “Ahhhh,” he said. “You have fun with that.”

While I was indeed simply dying to open that box, postmarked from Uncle Jim’s Worm Farm, at that moment, I had projects to finish. If I opened it, that would be the end of that, so the box was placed on the kitchen table (don’t tell Tony- he’d never eat from that table again). At 4:30, I could stand it no longer. Scissors cut through tape, out came cardboard spacers and there, atop more brown plastic trays, wrapped in newspapers, was a cloth bag, damp and slightly squirmy.

I tugged on the drawstring and looked in. Yep, worms. Red and wriggling, looking a little dry and pathetic. Kind of weird and kind of cool all at the same time. I felt committed to their well-being immediately.

I unpacked the Worm Factory. A few wild adventurers had crept out of the bag during transit; those were found randomly between box and tray, jerking and flailing in the now-bright light. I was reminded of Earthworm in “James and the Giant Peach” – anthropomorphosizing this soon is going to mean trouble. A welcome sheet recommended adding about a 1/2 cup of water into the cloth worm bag immediately as “the worms probably need a drink.” I gently poured that in and set the bag on one of the plastic trays.

The assembly and farming instructions were printed on a slick white sheet in black ink and there were typos on the front that made me sigh in disappointment. The booklet told me I was a courageous, reliable, committed and intelligent individual, embarking on a quest both daring and challenging, sustaining the health of our beloved planet. Well, my goodness.

My sense of self-worth now happily inflated, I found all the parts as indicated, installed the faucet (to drain that worm pee, er, tea) in the collection bin and stacked all the other three trays, like dish pans with colanders in the bottoms, just as shown in the illustration. The lid fit snugly on the top tray.

And then things skidded to a halt. Included in the package were two Tyvek-like sheets – but nothing in the instructions explained what to do with them. The main illustration showed the two lower trays full of material: shredded paper, veggie peels and the like. But the instructions were incredibly vague, with sentences such as “Put the lid on the second trays.” Well, which one is the second tray? (the typos were making me nuts) Why were there “remaining unfilled trays” – plural – if you’re already using two of them? And citrus (orange peels) is a death knell for the worms? “Always feed worms from the top tray” made no sense as, in the illustration, the materials are clearly in the lower trays.

Since I am a fervent believer in the power of the 800 number, I dialed up Uncle Jim. And found out that the Worm Farm had closed just 15 minutes before. Internet searches revealed dozens of how-to videos to assemble the farm itself, but none of the getting-the-worms-situated-and-chewing information seemed to match Uncle Jim’s instructions.

Well, the worms were watered, squirming happily (or at least squirming) in a bag of damp peat. Could they last until Thursday morning? I thought yes. I packed the bag into one of the trays, stacked it all up and put it on the basement stairs landing and turned off the light.

There were no good night kisses and the kitchen table was scrubbed clean.

The next morning, I called Uncle Jim’s and spoke to (I would suppose) one of the nephews. He initially seemed a little put out at my questions, but explained very clearly (unlike the instructions) that the trays are added one at a time. The Tyvek can be used to line the tray – or not, as you prefer. The included bag of coconut coir should be mixed with enough water to make it almost soupy, but not quite (how about stew-y?), and laid on the bottom of the tray. This advice was mentioned absolutely nowhere in the booklet. Foodstuffs should be layered in (no citrus, not under any circumstances ever), a little shredded paper, “whatever you like” (except citrus, dairy, meat or oil) and then the worms dumped in and the lid closed. In 4 weeks, said the nephew, we should put more peelings and eggshells and shredded paper in a second tray. When we remove the lid from the first tray, we should see a pile of worm poop, er, castings at that point. That’s when we should put that second tray on top, replace the lid, and wait another week for the worms to migrate out of their (and I truly loved this) “byproducts.” After another few weeks, we’ll dump the castings in the bottom tray in the garden and add another materials-filled tray to the top, rotating these like a ferris wheel, with the most casting-rich tray on the bottom and the newest food at the top.

Never include citrus.

The nephew said the cycle will go faster and faster as the worms reproduce to fill the space, but never to overpopulate (that’s smarter than humans). He also mentioned that I shouldn’t include citrus peels or rinds. (I get it, I get it, I get it.)

I hung up the phone and went through the “Other Useful Hints” in the booklet again. With the nephew’s clarification, the hints made more sense. It was recommended that materials be cut into small pieces, even run through a food processor. In for a penny, in for a pound, I hauled out the Oster and shredded the old brussel sprouts and the mealy apples. I promised myself this would not become a regular custom.

I dumped the coconut coir into a big steel bowl and added water. The earthy smell of spring wafted from the bowl and I took a deep breath. And added more water. And more water. And more water – this stuff just sucks it up. Finally, there was enough to hand mix it into a sludge, seemingly exactly what the nephew described. That went on top of that sheet of Tyvek in the bottom tray. On top of that went the sprouts and apples and old onions (will the worms have bad breath? will they still be able to mate with this troublesome halitosis? or have I doomed this colony to a Shaker-like demise?). On top of that, shredded paper and a good drink of water. I did not add any orange peels.

The worms were then released from the bag, dumped rather unceremoniously into the center of this tray. I fretted about water content, so added another 1/2 cup. The shredded paper seemed to soak it up. The worms, every one of them named Herman, felt the wind in their hair and wiggled and squirmed in celebration of their freedom. I wondered if there were truly 1,000 and if there is someone at Uncle Jim’s patiently counting 1,000 worms into cloth bags. The cloth bag, seemingly completely empty, went outside the house nevertheless, placed on the backyard hose reel.

The lid went on the farm and the whole kit and kaboodle went to its permanent home on the landing of the basement stairs, two empty trays waiting their turn. All The Hermans can get to work now; the many factors for eating and pooping are perfectly in place. The temperature is perfect there, they have a very full meal in front of them and there is no citrus.

I shut the door to the basement and felt courageous, reliable, committed and intelligent. I felt like I’m doing a small part to make the planet a better place. I felt this year’s tomatoes will be juicier, the cucumbers bigger, the coneflowers taller and my impatiens bushier.

I felt the need to scrub the kitchen table again.

Ordering Worms

compost bin stuffed

lasagna compost without snow cover

It’s getting to be a problem. We save egg shells, veggie peels, tea bags and those shredded confidential documents. Orange peels pile up, wilted celery piles on top of that. Makes you think that this might be the beginning of a hoarding story, doesn’t it? Fear not – there is nary a cockroach, rat, mold or fungus here.

We do, however, have a problem. While all these materials are perfect for composting, perfect for becoming those “coffee grounds” of nutrient-rich soil to be spread on top of our beds, they become a challenge in the winter. The compost bin is stuffed. I’ve filled every container I can find by pit composting. The lasagna composting in the front bed looks, quite honestly, gross without adequate snow cover.

So now, here come the worms.

I’ve been considering vermicomposting for about a year now. I’ve pulled up unclejimswormfarm.com so many times that my browser automatically fills in the site when I type “u.” I had many questions and concerns. Where do I put these things? They cannot be outdoors in the cold winter, or even in the baking hot summer. They are indoor crawlers. Do they ever escape from the worm farm? Will they smell? What if they are prolific breeders like Creepy and Crawly?

We found Creepy and Crawly, two snails, in a hibiscus pot many years ago (B.D – before dogs) and the kids insisted on keeping them as pets. I bought a small fishbowl, threw in some dirt, plants and a cuttlebone (recommended by the snail-keeping experts), and stretched a piece of screen in an embroidery hoop for a cover. Perfect low maintenance pets! Entertaining – albeit in an extremely slow, quiet way, but still entertaining. Of course, we read up on snails and discovered they are hermaphrodites; Creepy and Crawly were both males and females. How amazing, we thought! The first laying of eggs was also amazing, tiny pearls in the soil. The first hatching was amazing, the baby snails simply charming, traveling (at “breakneck” speeds) up and down the sides of the fish bowl, small as a pencil dot. Then we learned a lesson. While they may be slow travelers, snails breed faster than the blink of an eye. Soon, we had a fishbowl absolutely chock-full of snails of all ages, continuing to mate, lay eggs, hatch and mature in a matter of weeks. It was a perfect environmental disaster – a wonderful teaching moment. The kids and I discussed predators and prey and natural balance. Then we set the fishbowl outside and took off the cover. Hundreds (if not thousands) of snails made their way out into the sunshine, making the neighborhood birds very happy. We theorized that Creepy and Crawly, being so much older than the rest, were probably much wiser as well, and had made it down into the dirt safely – it made the kids feel better.

So do I really want to open up this new “can of worms”? Do I really want to have the responsibility to feed and shelter 1,000 red wiggler worms? Would this smell? These worms, Eisenia Foetida if you prefer the Latin, are perfect decomposing machines. They eat paper and peels and shells and even tea bags, converting them into worm castings (a very nice way of saying worm poop), packed with nutrients, making the perfect mulch and top dressing. Worm tea (a nice way of saying worm pee) is also full of nutrients. Fellow gardeners say there is no smell and escapes are rare. Still I hesitated. This was a big leap in compost craziness.

Today, I leapt into the insanity. I finally had enough of the just-plain-wrong look of the lasagna compost and dropped the Worm Factory (3 tiers so the worms migrate upwards to separate themselves from the compost – I am going only so far – I am just so not picking out worms from compost) into my shopping cart. 1,000 worms (the smallest quantity available) went in too. Found a discount code online and then pressed “place order.”

My brother Rich is amused and interested. He thinks he’s going to be another disaster; too many worms reproducing far too quickly, producing too many castings. He is looking forward to regular reports. I tell him there can’t be too many castings with all the beds we have. And as for too many worms – well, there’s always the birds.