Attack of the Replechauns

My two-year-old was telling us all about the "replechauns" over breakfast today. I found it rather cute. My oldest has gone hog-wild over St. Patrick's Day. She spent much of the day yesterday, with her brothers' help, making little paper shamrocks, pots of gold, and leprechaun hats that they'd sneak around the house and attempt to "surprise" their mother and me with. She even set up a treasure hunt.

Her reach exceeded her grasp, however, and before she went to bed she had to delegate some of her plans to her mother and I. To me she bequeathed the "making of the sign." She'd drawn letters for a sign, and I was supposed to cut out the letters and attach them individually to a string to hang up across the top of our stairwell. I colored and cut them out, but instead pasted them to cardstock, drew some extra thematic elements and hung it. It seems to have passed muster.

In other news, though, I seem to have contracted Khan Syndrome; as in "You've managed to kill off nearly everyone else, but like a poor marksman you keep missing the target!"

No, I haven't killed anyone. In my case I've managed to buy just about everything else, but I keep missing the compost bin. You see, my clever design to build composters into each of my planter beds didn't turn out as well as I'd have liked. We're going to remove that feature to secure some more garden space.

Instead we need to find some compost bins that will work. The way our yard is arranged there's really no place to build a big one like we had at the old house, so I've got to come up with something smaller and/or portable.

The other night I took the boys with me and went to Home Depot to see what they have. They don't. But I bought some solar yard lights and a bulk pack of canvas yard gloves. Then we went to a local garden/pet store chain. They had two models, both as expensive as all get-out, with not much capacity.

Saturday I took my older boy and we set out again. We went to a larger farm/ranch/home chain. They don't have anything...yet. We can't wait. I've got to get the compost out of the way so my wife can start planting things. So we went to a local nursery. They don't have anything. We finally ended up at Lowe's. They don't have anything, either, but by that point I was hatching plans to make my own.

I had hoped to pick up the materials I needed. Instead I ran out of time. But as we were leaving I noticed a chipper/shredder. It was electric. It was inexpensive. It was on clearance. It was the only one left in the store. I bought. I took it home. I demo'd it for the kids. It's nice. It's very nice.

And it's not THAT unnecessary a purchase. It will help with yard waste and making our composting efforts more successful. But still, I've spent over $200 in my pursuit of a composter so far and we don't yet have a composter.