my quiet spot, originally uploaded by Crystal Pistil.

In all of my earliest memories there was a garden......and a compost pile. The two go together like Randy and Mr. Lahey. The habit of tossing veggie scraps into a separate container has been permanently stamped into my brain. Since I moved to Florida and have had no means of a proper garden (or proper recycling of any kind) I feel guilt every time I toss those vitamin packed scraps into the trash.
So here I am with my little container garden. I do have somewhat of a yard, but we only rent and I'm not sure how our landlords would like me digging everything up. Plus, the soil is like a mixture of sand and ash so I couldn't imagine anything being able to grow in the ground anyway. One more thing, I did do some digging around and found a really old and really shallow sewer line into our backyard. Gross.
Anyways, yesterday I made a nice little compost box and put it way, way in the back of the yard.

This morning I woke to find that something had found the box and ate a few of the scraps I tossed last night (a raccoon) I don't really mind, Raccoons are pretty cute, but this one is greedy. After helping himself to the salad bar, it looks like the little dude tried to re-dig up the old sewage line, then he came over to check out the garden. It looks like he stuck a paw in every pot just to check it out. Then he went to have a nice drink/wash in the fishpond (he f'd it up nicely) and to top it off, climbed up to have a look in the window (he left muddy paw prints)

In the end, there wasn't that much damage done, but this was only the first night after starting the compost box. I think I'll give it a week and see what happens...