Friday, March 16, 2012

Covered Mystery Revealed

Well, I did it.  I opened the covered area and discovered what was inside.  The pallet that covered the area was beginning to rot, so it took quite a while.  One side of the pallet was as fragile as paper.  Furthermore, a board meant to stabilize it fell right off.  Pillbugs and spiders scurried over my hands in a mad frenzy as they attempted to find new shelter. 


It was heavy.  So heavy, in fact, that the pallet nearly fell on top of me when I misstepped and caused it to shift in the wrong direction.  I stumbled on one of the cinder blocks that had been holding it in place and nearly fell into the area that the pallet had covered.  Fortunately, I was able to keep myself up by stumbling into a brick on the opposite side of the area.

It was rough work. 

I lifted a tarp to expose the area once and for all.  It was time for the moment of truth.

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What a letdown...

It was empty.  The area being covered was nothing more than a slight depression in the earth.  No storm shelter, no tunnels, no animal den.  I was extraordinarily disappointed.

Once I recovered from the knowledge that there was nothing exciting hidden in the area, however, I realized that this wasn't actually a complete letdown.  There's always something to be done with any discovery you can make, after all, and this was no exception.

As mentioned before, I believe in finding every possible way to keep food from going to waste.  One of those ways is composting.


I dumped my vegetable waste into the depression, covered it with the dried leaves and dirt already inside the area and decided to try my hand at a compost heap.  In the past I had great success with compost bins, but I'd never tried an open-air heap.  There's a first time for everything, though, and I couldn't pass this opportunity up!  I recovered it with the disintegrating tarp I had found, just to be sure the dirt below didn't dry out before the heap was large enough to protect the area, but eventually I'll leave it completely open.

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