Goddammit my roommate is pissing me off

 OKAY. I finally got my compost bin up and running, thanks to a good friend of mine. I bought one of those $7 bigass tote bins from one of those everystores - except locally-owned rather than Wal-Mart - took it over to my friendo's place. She drilled 1" holes on the top and bottom to allow plenty of air and moisture in and a thoroughfare for earthworms. Without her help, this would not be possible (I would have simply mangled it like an idiot).

Yeah, that's right. No $100 hipster bins, just a $7 tub for my broke-ass. Suits the job well and that's good enough for me *gloating noises*

After a bit of research I learned that pests Are A Thing™, and that it's best to put a heavy object on top of the bin to protect it from uninvited rummagers of trash and compost. A big rock chillin' out in the corner of the yard measured up to the task, and was hired immediately.

It's about 1/3 full, and composed of shredded paper, the rest of my local soil I'd bought, and a week's worth of veggie scraps I'd saved in the freezer. One of my roommates (not the one who pissed me off) owns a paper shredder, and kindly let me shred all of our junk mail for the bin. I thought three tiny sacks of shreds was not enough, but it turned out to be almost too much. 

Also, the compost bin was set up for four days and there's already white mold growing on it???

Turns out, white mold is beneficial to composting and I have a lot to learn 🙃

White mold is a sign that the matter is decomposing properly. Bear with me, because I had never composted anything successfully before so I don't know what to expect. White mold apparently forms on woody matter, and there's more: green mold forms on food scraps, and pink mold is the bad guy. Pink mold kills the organisms that decompose, but I read that soap and water helps get that sorted.

AND! MY TOMATOES ARE COMING IN!

I counted approximately six tomatoes in total, with my thumbnail shown for size comparison. I bought this as a start so I'm thrilled to see this kind of progress. After failing hard last year, it just feels good to have a little bit of success, however small that may be!

Let's talk guerilla gardening. This is a subject I learned about over the past few days. It's basically growing plants on public or private property without permission for a variety of purposes: community food, encouraging pollinators, retaking the environment with native plants. I once heard about some guy who planted sequoias on a rival's property.

Revenge, how sweet are ye.

I'll look into this more as time goes on and I figure it'd be a great way to connect with local environmental and food groups. So much water is wasted on lawns, too many bare patches of land go on dead and neglected. Such a waste! We've waited long enough for the government to do something about it (har har), so... why not take action into our own hands?

Plant pollution-fighters along roadways. Plant native flowers to help pollinators. Little food gardens in places away from the roads, that anyone can just come harvest for themselves. Are you hungry? Just go get the food. That's how it should be, but I know that realistically, it's a tougher nut to crack.

Projected example of me as a guerilla gardener

I want to just rush headlong into neat things I find, yet I have too little attention span to be sensible about things. It's too easy to get caught up in the excitement!

On my next post I will see about discussing a little bit of socialism and food insecurity. If I don't, I know I'm going to squee about every tiny little change that happens and honestly that does get old after a while. I can't help it, I'm rather excitable. DON'T LOOK AT ME

Bitch, you owe rent