Thanks Government

Aaron has told me he feels a little weird living across the river in what we jokingly refer to as the "socialist" state of Maryland. He feels weird because he's realized that he really likes it - lots of wonderfully maintained parks, nature centers, community programs, health assistance programs, great libraries, smooth roads, etc. We benefit big time from having so many wonderful parks to play at. It's a noticeable different from other towns I've lived in where the only communal place for kids to play was the McDonald's playground.

Last week I had a pleasant surprise when I learned our county gives out composters for Free. (Thanks to Dean who did the finding out for me) The day I found out, we picked one up and went to work assembling it. Joan and I paved an area for it to sit so vermin couldn't burrow into it from below. Then Reuben and Miriam "assisted" me in assembling it. The plastic was rolled Super tight so we wrapped it around our fisher price car to get it to stay open then Reuben helped me screw the bolts on. His tiny fingers were remarkably well suited for the job.

Here it is:

Here's Reuben next to it for scale.

Eight days later, it's up and running. I was feeling pretty proud of getting it put together. Then I reread the directions to make sure I had the green to brown ratios right. At the bottom of the assembly instructions I noticed it said "assembles in only 2-3 minutes" What?!? That drained away some of my pride. But not all.

Here's Battle supervising our efforts.

Here's Reuben throwing a frost frozen green tomato into the bin. And if you are wondering, yes the tomato made it in. On his first shot too. As poor Miriam can attest to, Reuben's aim is excellent.

Even though we've only had it a few days, it's already come in handy. There are tons of leaves falling from the trees. The frost took out our garden so we cleared what remained. All that and dinner scraps have found their place in our composter to make some good dirt for next year's garden.

As a bonus, while digging out the spot for the paving stones we found the biggest earth worm I have ever seen. It looked like this. See me at the bottom of the picture?

Okay, not really. But it was so big that I at first thought it was a snake. Reuben was mesmerized but refused to touch it. After I let it go Reuben insisted we find "more worms" for me to hold and him to glare at from a safe distance away.

Sadly our worm was not even as large as the giant gippsland worm pictured below. They are only found in Australia. If you want to read more about giant worms you can go here. There are legends and rumors of worms more than a foot in diameter and many feet long. Just like Dune...