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No, not oil. Not Guinness either. I'm talking about compost. I've been making my own for a while with variable results. The result of the last twelve months' effort imply that I'm getting the technique and ratio pretty good. Pretty simple recipe. I compost everything from the kitchen, except meat, in my plastic compost bin. This includes all peelings, trimmings, tea bags, spent ground coffee, egg shells, egg cartons and kitchen roll tubes. Some people advise avoiding too much citrus fruit but that isn't really a problem. When the plastic bin is ready, which you can tell when you turn it with a fork, I add it to my 2 cubic metre compost store. I also have a three sided bin for leaf mould that is filled to overflowing every autumn with leaves from our plane, lime, sycamore, apple, chestnut and cherry trees. The leaves break down into leaf mould at different rates with the plane leaves (my most abundant from two mature trees) taking longest. In the autumn, I emptied the previous year's leaves to the two cubic metre compost store and mixed it well with the contents of my plastic bin. It has not been touched since.
Why am I telling you all of this?
Well, as I am feeling better and the garden has been neglected for a while due to the weather, I used my dark, rich creation to mulch the sad looking borders. Aside from providing an instant dressing to the exposed soil, the mulch is protecting the early spring growth from our next frost or snowfall and giving any active worms some delightful organic matter to drag back down to their homes, thus providing extra nutrients to the roots of all the plants. 
Today presented a very welcome break from the icy conditions and other misery that have gripped the country of late. While still cold and damp outside, all the snow has disappeared and the sky was blue. A brief expedition into the garden revealed that the spring bulbs pay no mind to the increase in VAT and the grief it causes shop keepers; the Cornus cares not to which parts of the great nation some Scottish idiot chooses to send the gritter trucks; the Hydrangeas aren't bothered about the date of the general election and the Skimmia doesn't even know it is 2010.
One could have been forgiven for believing that spring is on the way...
There seems to be a theme on this blog. Nothing for ages, then an apology that I have not posted for a while. Possibly a little rant on a Friday night after one too many glasses of wine.
I feel the need to rejuvenate the site. Not because it is January, rather because it is stale and aimless. I'd like to set myself a challenge or goal. Let me know if you have suggestions...
In the mean time, what has been going on? Well... today is the middle of January 2010. I'm not going to apologise for my lack of posts but I am going to comment that it takes me being signed off work sick, having spent all of today in bed to be able to find time to post. Being over worked sucks and is quite likely the reason I feel awful.
So, November and December have mostly been about Miss Pickle and the grotty weather. As we know, Miss Pickle spends a lot of her time asleep.
Through November she was housebound as we got her used to her food source. She would spend many an hour gazing out of the kitchen window, wishing that she could get closer to her future friends
For Christmas, our little lady received an escape route in the form of a new cat flap - she is officially allowed out of the house during the day to explore her surroundings. Those of you living in the UK will know that the weather of late has not been too welcoming but she has been coping OK.
However, she still loves coming back inside and falling asleep by the radiator. If she's lucky, there may even be a sunny spot available.
Well, so long for now. I need to get some rest...
