Thursday, April 14, 2011

Uninvited Houseguests

I bet you didn't think I was going to start this post talking about my compost pile! Turns out there's an art to having one in Texas that I have yet to perfect. I'll come back to why this is relevant, but first I need to back up a bit.

This week Sophie passed her kindergarten intake exam with flying colors. As part of the test she had to count sunflower seeds, bu then she got to bring the bag of seeds home with her to plant. Rather than buy potting soil, I've had a compost pile going for about a year now so I thought this was the perfect time to see whether or not it was actually composting.

I had to dig through about a foot of very dry material before I struck black gold - a dry, but definitely rich soil. I took a big scoop with my shovel and filled four potting containers for the seeds. We had a fun activity Monday planting and watering the seeds.

Yesterday I watered them again and noticed that the kids must have been playing with one of them because the surface looked disturbed. I patted down the soil, watered it and didn't give it any additional thought - until this morning! There was a BIG hole in the corner of the pot.


I started searching the house and finally found the culprit in our entryway.


Yes folks, that is a GRUB - and it's almost as big as my cell phone! So I guess this confirms that our compost has the ability to help things grow big! Unfortunately it also confirms that it's not composting hot enough - I hear that means I need to add manure and strawberry soda??

5 comments:

Jamie said...

Why don't you water it?

The Tanner Thompsons said...

everything really is bigger in texas.... YUCK!

Fly Girl said...

hakuna matata, did you eat it for lunch!?!?! :)

laree ulynn said...

i think i'll skip my dinner tonight. that is disgusting.

Kam said...

oh how very disgusting, Bryce. I'm not sure Lisa should continue to let you post on this here blog. and maybe you shouldn't be composting, either.

(only kidding, but you'd get a very sisterly "ewwwwwwww. grossss!!!" from me if we were having this conversation in person!)