Lunch and Flowers and Worms! Oh My!

It's amazing to me how much work it takes just to make a small area look decent.  But since Spring has indeed sprung and I want to like what I see when I look out the front window, somebody had to do it!  But first, lunch with an out of town friend....:-).

We made plans to have lunch with our friend Bob who we had not seen in almost two years because of traveling.  We decided to try a restaurant in our town that Chris and I had not been to before.

Somebody is very happy about the idea...haha

Bob came in right behind us.  We had spent a few minutes outside looking for one of his motorcycles, but learned that he had driven instead.

Bob ordered some tacos.  They looked good, but I'm not sure that they were.

Chris ordered a "slider trio" and a very strange salad which happen to be my favorite part of his lunch...:-).

I ordered a pulled pork sandwich with coleslaw and mac and cheese.  I shouldn't have....really.  I was NOT good at all.....:-(. I have never heard of a pulled pork sandwich which did not have barbeque sauce on it.  And I don't like cheese sauce that is gritty and graining as though it was not cooked long enough.  Yuck.  I only had a couple of bites and was done with all of it.

It didn't take long before we decided to leave and get some coffee.  We went to this other cafe that we had never been too.  I know, daring aren't we..ha

It's nicely done on the outside and I love to have coffee at a bistro.

 Here is Bob and Chris, chillin...

I snapped this picture of the inside of the cafe.  We later found out that it doubles as a church on Sundays.  Cool......:-)

We had to make another trip to Vancouver after searching high and low for more of the Hibiscus that we had purchased a couple of days earlier.  So, we had to beat feet after lunch and head out again.  We made a short stop and then hit the highway.  We managed to find two more plants and headed straight back to our little town.  Unfortunately, we were not able to get everything we wanted from the one store, so we had to stop at another to pick up two more winter heather.

these are they.....

We got the last two trees in and the heather and was very glad that the rest will be done once the bulbs die back in the flower pots.

The landscapers are supposed to come some time this month and lay some sod.  I think things will be beautiful once everything is done.  We knew from seeing them along the highway to plant them on a slope.

 Afterward, we decided that we needed to harvest some vermicompost for our plants and make more bedding for our worms....:-).  You might remember when we set up the first system in Lawton last year.  We now have one here in Canada too that we have been maintaining for the past 5 months.

It works perfectly for smaller spaces.....

The temperature was perfect for the little guys.....:-)

I could almost hear the little guys cheering because they were about to have a bit more space and fresh bedding.  whoo hoo...ha

The system is called the Worm Factory 360 because the tray constantly rotate and get emptied when it is time for harvest.  Once you are ready to take your compost out for "curing" it needs to be separated from the little guys that are living in it.  We do it by putting the material in small piles and waiting a few minutes for the worms to work their way down to the bottom.  They do not like the light.

You gently pull the compost off of the top of the piles until you reach the bottom of them combining them into less piles as you go.  We then sift out any thing that had not yet been processed and put it back into the system with the worms.

After the separation took place, we were left with 1 1/2 gallons of pure castings for our plants and garden....
It should be rich, range in color from dark brown to almost black, smell like fresh soil and be very slightly moist....:-). By the way, the little tiny white specks are pulverized egg shell that I added early in the process for the purpose of ph level control.

Composting worms like it neutral or the composting food scraps will will burn their delicate skin.  Egg shells is a great way to do that...:-).  It also helps to feed tomato plants, roses and other plants that like calcium.  Not recommended if you want to use it on acid loving plants as the calcium neutralizes the acid.

ahhhhhh, perfect!  Thanks, guys!  Back to work now....:-).
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see ya soon!