another compost update

So with the first trimester sickness, followed by a second trimester vacation, followed immediately by a bad cold, I've been WAY slack on posts. Sorry 'bout that. Pretty much all I've managed to keep up on is my facebook status, and that's only because I can update in from anywhere on my blackberry when I'm waiting for something to happen. Anyways. I plan to make up for it by posting three blogs right now. Two here and one on the baby blog. So there.

I meant to post this ages ago, but my mini composter didn't work AT ALL. Chris finally had enough of it (when I couldn't stand the smell I put him in charge) and he did some research, and decided to pick up a 5 gallon bucket and dump all of it in the bucket. He also told me that for now on, we have to cover our compost with dirt every time we put more in there, so it doesn't get to wet. (We lucked out and got three big planters full of dirt from a freecycler, so we actually have dirt to dump over the compost now). This has worked to kill all the maggots and get rid of the odor, but the compost doesn't seem to be breaking down very quickly this way. Today I had to pot a couple of things (an avacado plant I'd been sprouting from seed, and some other random stuff) but I couldn't find any compost that didn't have big peels and veggie chunks in it, so I didn't use much of the compost in my planting, which was a bummer. But Chris got a second bucket to start composting in, so that the current compost can sit and do its thing and we won't keep adding new chunks to it. Of course, now that it's cold I don't expect it to do much breaking down. I guess only time will tell. Still. What a ridiculously long experiment!