compost bin

This year I have been thinking a lot about waste. Today I built a compost bin, which felt good as it not only didn't cost anything, but it used up all these mangy palettes that have been cluttering the front yard.



Tower Hamlets give us these brown waste food bins, but my main thinking around waste is that it's really important to dispose of as much of your own stuff as possible, rather than relying on council services. This is so that we're aware of how much stuff we are using - if we had to personally dispose of every single bit of non-degradeable rubbish we bought, we would definitely use less of these things.

Another aspect I find interesting, that's pretty unfamiliar to me, is that I've built something, but have no idea if it will 'work' until about a year. Will the palettes rot away? Will I get bored of it? Will I screw up and kill all the composting organisms? Who knows. In this day of fast response, throwaway stuff, it's really refreshing to have projects like this.

I found instuctions on how to build a compost bin from palettes from the Gardeners World website, good grief, never thought I'd end up there.

How to make a terrarium

I had a spare lightbulb that I had hollowed out left over from another project so I made it into a terrarium for my mum for Christmas.

It's very easy to make, you hollow out a lightbulb, then add regular soil, then stone or bark (I used bark) that has a load of moss on it. A dramatic rock adds good zen effect too - I used a chip of slate stolen from the garden centre.

No special tools required, though I used a few cotton buds to clean up the inside after all the soil had gone in.

Inpsiration from Instructables, one of the fewer and fewer remaining websites that bring me some form of joy.



The other good thing about this is that I still don't really know what it is. I guess the nearest analogy is a pot plant, but it's much cooler than a pot plant.