We have had tons of rain, which is strange given fires and droughts in other parts of our country.  So, when we turned our compost in May it smelled hideous.  I think it smelled like a sewer line burst.  My partner kept saying, “Let’s spread at least a little bit in our garden,” and I finally convinced her that it needed to be grass food.  I didn’t want a shred of that reeking stuff near our food.  We buried it in a trench and laid alternating piles of dried cheat (cheatgrass) and sand on it.  It doesn’t stink anymore, and will decompose and help the native grasses that I plant around our son’s trampoline flourish in the fall.

I turned the compost today and it smelled like a rhinoceros cage.  Truly.  It is so vile.  I think that my sister-in-law put curry spices in it too, so it smelled bizarre when I started using the pitchfork on it.  Finally, I tore up corrugated cardboard to absorb some of the moisture in the barrel that I use for my compost.  I think that I want to take some more classes about composting.  Getting the greens and browns right is difficult.

The secret seems to be air–after I got it moved around, it was less circus-tent-like in terms of odor

My partner had bought a coupon book last summer, so I went and bought two butterfly bushes at a local garden store that honored one of the coupons.  I think that our weird cold patterns killed my ten-year-old butterfly bush last year.  Sad.  I love butterflies and want to attract them, so I bought two different bushes this morning.  There was a gigantic yellow and black–viceroy?–butterflies on one of the bushes within an hour of my planting it.  I love watching them work.  I also like European honeybees and bumblebees on our other flowers.  We only have a very small patch of grass.  We have a xeriscape in our front yard, and fenced in garden in our backyard.  I love our space.  It’s a lot of work, but that appeals to my earthy nature.