I really enjoy having a nice garden.  I am, however, pretty terrible at actual gardening.  Both my parents and Mr Rs parents are amazing gardeners and I am often asking for hints, tips and help (and on Tuesdays I am occasionally accompanied to Mum and Dads by a plant in dire need of resuscitation, which they put in plant hospital and get looking better than it ever did at my house).

Mr R’s Mum and Dad have a compost heap and I became really interested in this last year as maybe that was the magic ingredient my plants were missing…decent compost.  Also, we throw out so many vegetable cuttings and peelings and surely composting would be more eco friendly?  And bless them, they bought us a compost thingamy for Christmas.  We just need to set it up. Only we don’t really know what we are doing.  But it’s ok!  The day has been saved!  As last week I saw the Village Repair Cafe cross post to the Village Gardening Network on facebook that the next guest at their monthly meeting was going to be a compost expert.

To my amazement, Mr R agreed to come with me.  Stepson 2 nearly fell off his barstool laughing.  Mr R told him there would be a rave afterwards and Stepson 2 commented that was clearly the only reason his Dad was going.  Being the older in mind than everyone else, I explained that even if the village garden network meetings were rounded off with a quick rave, we’d not stay that long as we’d have to get back with enough time for a nettle tea before bed.

We went.  Stepson 2 requested evidence if we weren’t actually the youngest people there.  Evidence was provided (I meant to write ‘youngest’. We weren’t the oldest either though).

And actually, of the 45 or so people there, at least five (In addition to the baby) were younger than us, and it was a really interesting evening.  I mean, we probably needed a basic level composting talk before going into that, but there was some amazing information about getting serotonin (the happy chemical) from the soil and the importance of the soil biome on the gut biome (I think that’s what he said).  And we know now that…well, we know it’s probably more complicated than we’d thought, but I have ordered a bokashi bin in addition to the big green thingamy so we can get started as soon as possible as one thing we did discover is that our soil is not great, shop bought compost is not great and…I’ve forgotten to plant the blimin’ tomato seeds again.  I’m hoping Beryl up the road has some sparsies again this year otherwise I’m going to have all the compost and nothing in it.

Still…one step at a time, eh? 🙂