Something Seriously Wrong

There is something seriously wrong with our mentality, and by "our" I mean at least the people in my apartment, perhaps the people on my street, in my city, province, this country but not, I suspect, the world at large.

Here in Toronto people have been educated, trained, indoctrinated, to be "neat" and to be "ecologically neat", so that the predominant thought is "When you are finished with something, put it out on the kerb on Wednesday", and more recently, "Put it in the appropriate coloured box on Wednesday", so we proudly point to our blue or yellow or grey or green box full of stuff; 'Look at how much I am re-CYCling!"

We are NOT trained to think "Just because I don't have a use for it, someone else might have a use for it".

So yesterday I collected a fan from the garbage. Electric, three-speed, oscillating, ten-inch blade with screen. Plugged it in. Works just fine.

Why is it in the garbage? It can't be because it doesn't work (excuse the double negatives) because it works. Storage space? It's not that big, besides, if you are short of space you toss a lot of stuff, not one item.

My guess is that the previous owner bought a bigger fan, or an air-conditioner, and "since I have no use for this, I'll toss it out".

Bad thinking. Non-thinking. Not so much thoughtless, as robot-like following the dictates of the local council that spends millions of dollars training people to cart stuff to the curb. On Wednesdays.

Shredded Paper - Status

I took a look at the paper-only tower; the "only paper and coffee grounds" tower to be correct. (This is one of my heavily-tapered towers; descent of material ought to be facile).

First thing you will notice is that a week or two ago I enlarged the outlet chute to be the full width of the tower - twelve inches. Still material is not cascading out. That is why this morning I decided to take a closer look.

The material at the base was compacted. I had to work hard at wrenching it out with a pinch-bar. That, surely, is too compacted to make life fun for worms.

Some of the material is visible, swept to the right-hand side. All paper material that comes out will be tossed into the finishing bin, which can always use good bedding!

Castings are evident, the brown mass extending from the right-hand side of the tower. The black area is the black plastic garbage bag that lines the tower. Castings tells me that worms have been here.

To the left of the pinch bar is a knot in the tower frame, and an equal distance to the right of the pinch bar worms can be seen. Worms are active down here. They have not seemed to attack the exterior of the lower portion of the mass.

Again, I suspect the density of the mass is an obstacle. Given time they would probably attack it from the outside moving inwards, chomping away at the fringes.

Within a few minutes, part of the suspended mass has fallen away. In the image below you can see slabs of very damp compressed shredded paper on the floor of the tower, and castings above and behind that. The upper mass of paper is slowly extruding itself downwards and another slab looks as if it is about to descend.

This is encouraging. It tells me that once the obstacle at the base of the tower is removed, material will descend promptly

Parts of the black plastic bag liner are evident. I rip away what I can see as it appears.

More material descends. Yes, those are big fat healthy pregnant worms dead centre of the image, and more worms just below them. You may find it hard to spot, but there is a big, luscious, fat, juicy egg visible quite near the top of the image. I have circled it for you.

I dragged about two gallons of material from the base before propping a sheet of wood against the base. I will check again in a week's time to see how we are getting on.

The finishing bin has received two gallons of wet shredded paper populated by big fat juicy pregnant worms. Just LOOK at the size of them.

Quite makes your mouth water, doesn't it.

Uh Oh! Broken!

Broken on two counts.

First my habit of picking up bits of colored glass from the beach, the sidewalk (poor dogs paws!) and sometimes at the local intersection. Collisions have a second use, too; they are a source of brightly colored refractive plastic!

Second, a glass bowl rescued from the trash with a weird triangular-toothed edge. I have found it awkward to use. I can't pour from it, and it just looks awkward when I'm eating from it.

Put the two together and what have you?

A colourful equivalent of a gravel pot.

I jabbed some philodendron-like cuttings in the colored glass, added water, and made two pretty table decorations.

Vermicomposting in the cold-climate apartment – Heat

I started these web pages about eight years ago, titled “Vermicomposting For The Cold-Climate Apartment Dweller”, with the main focus on vermicomposting when you can’t have your bin outside.

Toronto has just passed through the hottest days/nights in a million years or so, you know what I mean. “Records Broken!” is the phrase that comes to mind on seeing the number of competing newspaper headlines.

My finishing Chest – a two-foot square laundry tub of white plastic revealed a pound of worms huddled in one corner above the soil, exposed to broad daylight, andf a film of worms escaping up .

The contents of the tub had heated to the extent that daylight was preferable to heat.

Poor buggers.

I removed the cover half-way to let cooler (but only slightly) afternoon air waft over them, and they went home.

This morning things appear to have returned to normal after last nights major thunderstorms cleared the air.

But Oh! I didn’t expect to be reporting on measures to get my buddies to Chill Out!