Green Gal

I posted recently about the unfortunate death of many of the compost worms in my worm bin . In that post, I described finding a graveyard of dead worms and my attempts to rid the bin of an ant infestation. My attempt was successful, and there are no longer any ants in the bin! I am also excited to announce that the worms appear to be reproducing again, and I continue to find more of them in the bin each day. I was afraid that too many of them had died and that I'd need to buy more in perhaps a smaller amount than the first order, but after letting the worms be for about a week and feeding very small amounts of food, it appears they are doing just fine! I recently added a squash rind, some moldy peach chunks, and a pear core to the bin, and they seem to be enjoying the buffet. This is what the bin looked like this morning once I took the lid and cardboard covers off. Every couple weeks, I have to add more newspaper, which I did after checking in on the worms. They really love ...

It rained today at my house, which means my plants are happy as can be and the world smells amazing outside. Sadly, I didn't see or feel any rain today since I was indoors at work, but the signs and smells and evidence of rain was everywhere on my bike ride home and in the garden out back. Rain drops on leaves, damp soil, and the smell of wet earth and asphalt. Finally, fall seems to be here! (Knock on wood!) Sunflower and my mystery bulb, which I'm straining to remember if I maybe did plant... I planted a bulb in the plastic container in front of it after finding bulbs at the bottom of a dead flowering plant I received as a gift (it was alive when I received it as a gift!). I must have planted the second bulb in this spot. I feel silly for forgetting!  The mystery bulb has emerged!  Rain-soaked garden!  Look at those little rain drops! (Click the image for a larger view.) Today is also special because we harvested our first veggies from the garden t...

Yesterday, I picked up the white watering can on the right from the garden center, and then last night, my Aunt Diane surprised me with the one on the left! Thank you! They have different spouts, so one is for getting close to roots and the other is for watering larger patches. I went from having zero watering cans to two! Since I didn't grow my own pumpkins this year, I bought some small ones and put them around the garden, front porch, and inside the house as festive decorations for fall and harvest time. These new flowers were on sale at the nearby garden center for only 50 cents each! I couldn't resist. Thanks for watching with me as my garden grows! Green Gal

I mentioned yesterday on the blog that there has been an infestation of ants in my worm bin this week. They started showing up after I put squash in the bin for the worms two evenings ago. The morning that I put the squash in, I had discovered many of the worms were escaping. Thinking they were lacking food, I fed them more. In retrospect, I realize that part of the issue may have been that the bin was too acidic, with so much food in there. (More on this below.) Here are some worms enjoying the fig that I gave them Thursday morning after frantically searching for food they could eat during the day since most of our food scraps were frozen. I did a quick Google search on Thursday evening and read that making the bin more moist might stop the ants, so I watered it with a sprinkle of water, added some avocado skins after dinner, and went to bed. Yesterday morning, there were more ants. Like, a lot of ants, all swarming on the food that is supposed to be for my worms. I wasn'...