The Compost Bin

Unless someone posts some nasty comments about why I should avoid any of these seeds, I think I'm ready to finally place my Burpee order. It's a little flower heavy this year because my yard was destroyed by some renovations and I have a lot of empty space to fill.

My sister also got me a Gift Certificate for the Seeds Of Change catalog. I plan on getting mostly herbs and my favorite corn (True Gold) from them but I haven't finished deciding yet.

Porterhouse Beefsteak Tomato
Little Mamma Tomato
Tomato Early Girl
Tomato Tomande
Kentucky Wonder Pole Snap Bean
Burpee Golden Globe Turnip
Sweet Success Hybrid Cucumber
Bush Champion Cucumber
Parnsip Hollow Crown
Red Delicious Hybrid Pepper
Sunny Delight Squash
Summerlong Basil
Zowie Zinnia
Gaillardia Sundance Bicolor
Boy O'Boy Mix Marigolds
Burpee Hybrid Mix Zinnia
Blue Star Columbine
Quetzal Mix Columbine
Chinese Lantern
Gloriosa Daisy Double Gold
Gaillardia Amber Wheels
Lavender Lady
Alaska Shasta Daisy

I'm thinking about switching to the custom domain setup option for Blogger. That would let me use a real non-blogspot domain but it would still hosted for free by Blogger. All I'd have to do is buy a domain from someone like GoDaddy.com.

Moving to a real domain on a different host would be like starting over again. I'd lose all my backlinks and search engine traffic. But this Blogger Custom Domain automatically redirects your traffic from your blogspot site to your new site.

But the big question is, and I'd appreciated some help in the comments, what would the new site be called? CompostBin.com is taken as is TheCompostBin.com. I guess my only requirement in a new name would be that it has something to do with compost. Any ideas?

There's nothing sadder than a garden in the middle of the winter. Although the fact that most of the snow and ice has melted in my garden area while the rest of my yard still looks like Antarctica makes me think that I picked a great spot that gets lots of sun.

Once the warm weather returns, one of the first things I'm going to do is heavily mulch around these beds. Mulch is a great way to make things look neat outside. And as you can see in this picture, my garden is in need of some neat.

There's not a lot going on in my compost bin right now. As you can see here, there's some snow, remains of a big pumpkin and lots of leaves.

Once spring comes though, things should get cooking in a hurry. I can add a ton of coffee grinds at any given moment because I drink a ton of coffee. Then leaves, pumpkins and coffee will turn into black gold just in time to feed my vegetable garden.

If you read this blog over the summer you'd know that I was very happy with my purchase of a Colocasia Gigantea Thailand Strain (Giant Elephant Ear). Watching it grow from a little stick into a behemoth with five foot leaves was a lot of fun and very interesting for me.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it once the cold weather came but I had ideas of letting it dry out and storing the bulb in my garage. Well that didn't happen at all because I smashed it.

While trying to move the plant and it's 100 plus pounds of planter and soil over to my pool (hey I wanted a more tropical look) I dropped it down some concrete steps. Ooops! Most of the leaves snapped off and I thought that was the end of it. It was really sad looking.


But with less leaves, it became a much smaller plant. So into the house it went. There was no way that a 7 foot tall potted plant could have fit in my living room but my accidental alterations changed that. My living room has very little natural light in it but I figured that since the Elephant Ear does well in the shade, that it would be okay.


And it did better than okay. A few new leaves shot up and it even flowered. The flowers look a lot like peace lily flowers although they're a lot bigger.


I keep cutting off leaves so that it fits in my house. It really doesn't look great as a house plant but I'm just happy that it survived the fall and it's making it through the winter.

This summer my elephant ear is getting a prime location by the pool. I just may need some help moving it there.