As a knitter and a snowboarder, I never ever complain about winter unless it's 40 below. Now that the weather is warming up and the ground is thawing, I also look forward to getting outside and playing in the mud. I think my love of gardening is shared by a lot of other knitters out there. Last year, we volunteered to take some catalogues from one of our favourite greenhouses to the store for our customers to pick up. We were amazed by how many hundreds were taken! This got us to thinking about doing some gardening at the store location. There was a small unpaved patch at the front of the store that had decent exposure so we started there last year with some wild flowers. Perhaps not the best choice for such a small area. The taller ones took over and shaded the little ones, making it pretty scraggly looking. I think something a little more organized will work out better this year.

Our other plan is to plant a vegetable container garden along the parking lot fence behind the building. The side street that runs alongside the parking lot is very pretty, lined with beautiful turn of the century homes and Winnipeg's famous elm trees. Our parking lot is a bit of an eyesore in comparison. A big part of this plan is to make our own compost. We started looking at plans for the bin last year and have been collecting the bits and pieces right up until yesterday when we began building. We now have a fantastic compost tumbler made from an olive barrel, salvaged lumber and a dumpstered pipe! I haven't built anything for a very long time and it was so much fun to work outside and talk to the curious neighbours passing in the lane. Jason and I were busting our buttons with pride when we finally put the barrel on it's axle and gave it a spin!

For anyone interested in making their own compost bin, here are the plans that we used. The designer not only tells you what you need, but also tells you how to adjust the plan to fit any size of barrel that you find! He made a rather elaborate venting system that we didn't do. We just drilled holes that were large enough to vent the compost and small enough to keep the material inside.

http://dixiegrilling.com/tumbler.htm

or watch the youtube video

As the gardening season heats up, I will post more about how it's growing!