Philadelphia Urban Garden: Winter 2024-2025

01/06/2025-01/19/2025

Building a Birdhouse and Compost Bin

Winter arrived and I found myself visualizing my backyard filled with the fruits of my labor and providing of a multitude of reasons to get out of my house that didn't involve smoking a cigarette. The birds which surround my little peninsula of an apartment, with excruciatingly thin walls, are the bane of my existence. I'm not sure how anyone is supposed to concentrate on thousands of lines of macOS internals, holding various levels of abstraction in their tiny little brains and discover anything of value with a constant chirping and tweeting at intervals, with the perfect jitter timeouts to drive one insanse. Knowing the wiser but being a man of peace, I decided to make an offering. A birdbox for my sanity and a birdhouse for their sanctuary. Two birds with one box, four birds one seed, food for thought.

I'd also noticed that a single person with a full-time job and responsibilities outside the house is entirely unable to purchase and consume the correct amount of food that involves vegetables, without some of those vegetables inevitably rotting and going to waste. I already recycle. I know about permaculture. I have friends who farm. So I learned how to compost.

The goal is to have 50% brown material and 50% green material. You can really just go by the literal colors but brown material is material like newspaper, cardboard, toilet paper rolls, egg shells, spoiled hay, and dead leaves. Green material is organic material like your leftover rotting vegetables, apple cores, jalepenos, lettuce, tomato innards (seldom does a tomato go to waste in this household,) and coffee grounds.

I don't weigh these things, I just kind of eye it out. It turns out if your green materials aren't wet enough, it's probably best to wet the brown materials first. I found I used a bit too many newspapers and my compost didn't seem to be composting. Most of the material I read about composting advise to start in the fall to have your compost ready by spring. I had a late start so I found out that you can use WORMS to speed along the process.

I found it too tedious to call or visit every store that looks like it might have worms. You can't exactly search for them on Apple Maps. I loathe needing to use services like Amazon but if I don't things don't get done. I found a vendor that posts their product with a video description and character that communicates expertise and care. I found a worm guy, however uneasy about cui bono.

02/07/2025-02/08/2025

The Worms Arrive and Seeds are Gifted

After a short break in the action our worms arrived. I wasn't really sure what to expect. I'm not really capable of visualizing what 250 worms are supposed to look like in dirt no matter how many times I watch them on a laptop screen. At first the sight was slightly underwhelming. I guess I still kind of expected the big fat nightcrawlers I used to dig out of my grandparents yard before we went fishing. Worms shipped in the mail show up skinny and lethargic and one needs only to squeeze them to bring them back to life.

I was initially uncertain of the worms ability to borrow all the way to the bottom of the compost bin. I was assured, by a more compost experienced friend, that I could place them all on top and they would do their thing, turning my waste into worm poop.

Another friend gifted me with a giant bag of bird seed forever indebting me with the burden of refilling it to appease the most aggravating of the animal kingdom. God loves birds, Thomas does not. At this time, I had a food processor that was not yet broken due to protein powder cementing it to its base, so I was able to brew up some apple cider. Perfect for the winter months ahead.