Last year, after finally finishing the house renovations, we decided to concentrate on fixing the yard. The side garden has been neglected for years and needs lots of work, so slowly we’ll try to make it look good. 

This summer my hubby decided to make a compost box for the compost that is stored in front of the garden entrance. I have two compost piles. One is inside the garden, and it is used for stuff that can’t be used in the garden, like seedy weeds, sick plants, and plant roots. This pile is not used in the garden, in the spring I just spread the compost around the pile and start making another pile. We don’t burn a fire in the garden, we could do it, but the garden is right next to the forest, and the danger of accidental forest fire is just too big.

The other compost pile is next to the garden entrance. Here’s where I used to deposit bunny manure, and now it’s used to dispose of the weeds, leaves, and kitchen scraps. I compost everything from the kitchen, except for the bones. Some say that this shouldn’t be done because it will attract wild animals, and I can honestly say that I have never seen anything eat from the compost pile. I did have grass snakes family laying eggs inside the pile for a couple of years, probably due to the warmth of the pile, but I’ve never seen any animal go through the pile looking for food, and we have all kinds of animals here. Deers, roe deers, hedgehogs, boars, weasels, foxes, rabbits, cats, and dogs, some say there are even lynx, bears, and wolves near us, but I’ve never seen one. All the animals walk around the forest next to our house and even sit in front of the fence, but I’ve never seen any of them dig around the compost. Only Srećko likes to dig around it, right after he refuses the meal I left him in his bowl. 

My compost pile used to be just a pile divided into two parts, and every year I used only one side of the pile. When I emptied one side in spring, I started depositing new scraps on that side, allowing the other side to compost fully, and be ready for next season. Since there’s no more bunny manure, there’s no need to do this, so we decided that it’s time to build a compost box with a hole on the bottom where I’ll be able to pull the compost out. 

We used the leftover wood we had from shed demolition, and since we have lots of the leftover wood, we’ll be using it anywhere we can. The box was made out of old tool cabinets, secured with plastic nylon(scrap nylon hubby brought home from work) to keep it from rotting fast, and painted with water-resistant paint also leftover from the house renovation.

 We try to use all the leftover and scrap material that we can. Our city utility company has fairly strict garbage rules. We have separate bins for plastic, paper, and mixed waste, we’re not allowed to throw compostable things into the mixed bin, and if we want to deposit building materials, we have to pay for a garbage container which is really expensive if you don’t have enough material for a full truck container. We are allowed to order one container a year free for our bulky waste, but this is only for old furniture and big house waste. Building materials and home appliances aren’t part of the bulky waste, so if you don’t have a bunch of old couches, sofas, and mattresses, there’s no need for a bulky waste container. This is why we use everything that can be used. Metal is repurposed, wood is reused or burned in the stove, concrete and bricks are reused in building, papers are collected to the paper waste bin, plastic to a plastic waste bin, and kitchen and food scraps are composted. We even get biodegradable starch bags when online food shopping, so I can compost them as well.

When the box was finished, my hubby decided to make a small terrace to flatten the garden entrance. Living on the hill can be a bit tricky, especially when you need to carry stuff from and to the garden. There’s never a flat surface where you can put your things down. If you want to rest, you always need to hold the buckets and bags with your legs, or they will start falling and rolling around. There have been hundreds of occasions in which I didn’t place the bucket correctly between my legs, and it ended up rolling and spilling everything out. I had occasions when round vegetables ended up rolling all the way to the end of the yard and I didn’t even want to get it back. Also during the slippery period, it is really hard to walk without slipping.

This is why my hubby made a small terrace to flatten the path to the garden. There’s almost a 50cm height difference now between the path and the rest of the yard, but at least now we walk around the flat surface. 

Once the terrace was finished, we noticed that we’ll need to make a small fence to prevent Srećko from running to the forest. He’s a good dog, and he goes everywhere with me, but once he sees an animal in the forest he’s gone. He’ll run after deers and foxes all the way to the other city, and since he’s now older, he has problems returning back home. He gets back under our hill, sits there, and can’t get back home. So we decided to make a small fence, just to keep him from running. For now, the “fence” is a couple of old boards, but eventually, we’ll make a real fence. For now, it’s working.

The new fence came in hand for another use, and now we have a place to store our garden poles. I used to carry them all the way to the shed. Now the shed is gone, and also carrying the poles is just too hard. We have them now stored and covered on the fence shelf. 

I’ll probably make a small flower border around the fence and the path in the next couple of years after we finish all the big garden projects. We still need to make stairs and steps, a new vegetable garden, a couple of separate garden beds, a gravel path, fix the terrace, and repaint the whole fence. After this, I’ll start planting the new shrubs, plants, and flowers to make the garden look better, although I’m already pleased with the way things are looking now.