SECURED

SECURED!

A Short Story of Reinforced Dimensions

Having moved from sophisticated Contra Costa County to a newly excavated lot high above Mosquito Road in Placerville, I quickly discovered that gardening in the foothills required a different sort of education.

First, there were the rocks.

Then came the pipes, watering systems, holes, shrubs and trees. My husband, Bruce, soon tired of digging post holes but, for reasons still unclear to me, refused to buy an electric jackhammer spade. So I enlisted our good ol' handyman, Brooks.

But what, I wondered, should go into those holes?

The answer, according to my early lessons with the Master Gardeners, was compost.

I began enthusiastically composting everything but bones: vegetable peelings, coffee grounds, eggshells, wilted lettuce, rotten fruit, spoiled bananas and anything else that appeared to have given up on life.

My first little compost tumbler was not a great success. Once filled, it was too heavy to tumble. It didn't get enough brown material to balance the green kitchen waste. And during our resident bear's annual visit, the cover was ripped off and the contents scattered across the yard.

Clearly, I needed a better compost bin.

A serious compost bin.

I read everything I could find. I brought home armloads of books from the Heirloom Expo. By fall, with leaves dropping, garden plants dying and kitchen scraps multiplying, I announced that the time had come.

I asked Brooks for a workday and informed Bruce of my plan.

Bruce's attitude toward gardening has always been: You gotta do what you gotta do—with heavy emphasis on the you.

The electric jackhammer was rented. Groundbreaking began. Post holes were dug. Cement was mixed. Brooks was on a roll.

Until Bruce noticed that the posts hadn't been measured precisely.

Bruce is a methodical person. He firmly believes that the devil is in the details.

“Put your foot where you want the post,” Brooks told me.

“Don't you want some string? Boards? A measuring tape?” I asked.

Brooks gave me his I-know-what-I'm-doing look.

“We're not building the Taj Mahal,” he said.

Famous last words.

What followed was a slow but determined procession of measuring, explaining, sawing, talking, stopping for lunch, talking some more and making repeated trips to Home Express.

Then came the question of how to enclose the bin.

We had to consider the bear.

There were also wild turkeys, foxes, possums, moles, gophers, deer, mice, voles, toads, snakes and—oh yes—the darling and destructive squirrels.

This compost bin would have to be sturdy.

“It needs to be reinforced,” Bruce said. “Heavily reinforced.”

Heavy-gauge staples were pounded in by the hundreds. Two-by-fours were added along the top and inside the middle.

It was, in my opinion, reinforced enough to contain a small army.

But then came the rain.

Although compost requires moisture, apparently it requires controlled moisture. The lid had to be weatherproof. It also had to be hinged because Bruce had selected three-quarter-inch plywood, which was far too heavy for me to lift. Brooks wanted to just leave it open.  Uh-uh. More measuring. More shopping.

More research.

One thing I have observed over the years is that men seem to think of and do only one thing at a time. Meanwhile, women have been multitasking around the globe for centuries. Three weeks passed.

While the men researched hinges, paint, weatherproofing and the appropriate color, I continued collecting compost materials. Garbage cans filled with leaves, vegetable peelings, grass clippings, cardboard and garden debris.

Then a worm bin appeared in the kitchen after another Master Gardener confab. Apparently, there were different kinds of worms.

And no, Bruce, you were not supposed to throw away the cardboard egg carton.  And yes, I needed those empty toilet paper rolls.

A gallon of red paint appeared.

By the time the enormous lid had been painted and weatherproofed, the weather forecast suggested that we should perhaps forget the compost bin and begin building Noah's Ark.

The rains came. 

The compost project stopped.

Then, one day, the sun returned—and I noticed gopher mounds near the bin.

“Oh my God,” I said. “I forgot about the ones coming from underground.”

We needed wire.

Bruce instructed me to go online and find out what the experts recommended. I learned about hardware cloth, wire gauges and something called “gopher wire.” Eventually I went to the local Farm Supply, where a group of energetic young employees held what appeared to be a round-table engineering conference concerning the appropriate gauge of wire and the exact measurement of fifty-five inches.  Every sales person had a smartphone.

And everyone was calculating, and calculating, discussing..........

Eventually, my wire was cut and loaded into the car.

The next day, Bruce was working on the enormous red plywood door.

“I thought you were going to put a handle on the cover so I could lift it,” I reminded him in my sweetest voice.

“Yes, I will get to it,” he replied, in his sweetest voice.

Then came an in-depth discussion of whether the cover should be opened before the door, or the door before the cover.

Time passed. Our voices became less sweet and kind.

Bruce finally selected the biggest, most secure bolt he could find in his collection of screws, bits and hardware.

Actually, he installed two enormous bolts, top and bottom

 

He instructed me to try them.

They were secure.

Very secure.

I gave him a high-five, and we went in for lunch.

Except, of course, that this is not quite the end of the compost-bin story.  There was the day two male deer apparently decided to use the reinforced sides as a tap-dance floor. I heard the tremendous din and came running.  Had it been the bear, however, I have a feeling I might have been definitely late for lunch.