Cupcakes and Compost

I felt like taking a day off from drawing or painting so here's are a couple more pictures on the cake decorating theme... cupcakes:

Gosh, I want one right now! For a long time, my friend Cloud and I had wanted to do a bunch of really fancy cupcakes. So when I was visiting Twin Oaks a little while ago and there was a joint birthday party for a couple of our friends, it was the perfect excuse. And in the end, they looked awesome, but while we were making them and it was taking longer and longer... and longer, we started to wonder why we do the things we do. Sometimes, you just have to make fancy cupcakes whether you are enjoying it or not. It just becomes a sort of compulsion. Is that what art is about?

The other thing I wanted to post about today is our compost. :) I was worried that it wasn't doing what it is supposed to do because it wasn't getting hot. I thought maybe we didn't have enough fresh stuff in there. And I suppose that may still be the case in order for it to really start cooking and kill of weed seeds and bad bacteria, but when I went out there to stir it up, what I saw made me really happy. It was really starting to look like soil! And we had lots of life in there! And worms! We are doing something right! It's funny how starting this garden out for the lady for whom we are cat-sitting is more exciting to me than gardening has been in the past. I mean, it has always been exciting, but I am just getting really happy about the littlest things, like worms. I think that it is because I always felt like I was working in other people's gardens before. I was just kind of taking orders, learning a lot, but doing what they said. And now I get to just do whatever I say :) So, it feels good when things work out.

 it's becoming soil!

 we have worms!!!

So, Juneau and I want to get a bunch of compost made before it is time to transplant things in this table-like raised bed we are building because we need soil and don't want to buy it when we can just make some really great stuff. We found manure, and in that straw and saw dust, and we put in some soil from the yard, but we also need more food scraps than we make ourselves. Where shall we get these? Our local grocery store dumpster. I know lots of people are really uncomfortable with the idea of dumpster diving, but when we, in the US, end up throwing away 50% of the food we grow, I think it is really the best thing anyone can do to not just fix up their soil, but also to eat and help the environment. I even think it is better than growing your own food as it uses no resources and it's cleaning up other peoples' mess. If that food goes into the landfill it will decompose anaerobically and create methane. Methane is 20 times more effective at trapping heat than carbon dioxide! That means it's really bad for global warming. If you want to learn more about dumpster diving there is a pretty informative and entertaining documentary called Dive. I watched it on netflix. Here is a link to the website for the film: http://www.divethefilm.com/