Grass clippings and weeds

This summer I've been terrible at getting the lawn mowed. A few weeks ago it'd gotten so bad that I had to borrow a neighbor's lawn mower to cut it all. Normally I use my push-powered reel mower, but this was way beyond what I could handle. Between my front lawn and my neighbor's front lawn (which was also looking shaggy, and hey, I had a lawn mower!), I emptied the bag at least 15 times.

Rather than emptying it into the garbage can, I thought I'd start a compost pile in the back yard. As we were finishing the back yard this year we recycled our old porch into some 4x4 garden boxes with the hope that one day we'd get around to planting something. Perfect! Both of them were filled to overflowing by the time I got done, but I felt good about not wasting good yard waste.

A few weeks ago I spent the evening mixing some compost from the city dump into a pile of the dried grass. Tonight was round 2, and I'm happy to report that everything is well-mixed and heavily watered. Hopefully it will all break down over the winter so we can have loads of nice fresh compost for our veggies.