PRE-SPRING UPDATE

For those who enjoy this sort of thing, here is some of it.  The bowl of the birdbath someone left out on the curb a few years ago started breaking up last year, so I molded a new one by making a hole in the soft soil of one of the planting beds and casting it in place.  It needed a depression in the bottom, 1 inch deep and 5 inches diameter, so I faked up a thing at the bottom of the hole and miraculously it all worked out.  I dug it out and hosed it down and it looked pretty good. It fits over the top of the pedestal fine and it holds water.  I used one bag of mortar mix.  Here is a tip I already knew so I didn't have to learn it by accident - don't dump the whole bag into the mixing tub.  Save some in case you get it a little too wet, and you can balance it out.  Here is the hand-molded rustic birdbath: [Addendum - I removed the inner tray, remnant of the old leaking bowl.  The wire frame is  primarily to keep the crows off, but the little birds like to perch on it and scope things out before they go in.]

I didn't dig out the compost heap last year, so this is the year for it.  Below is the sifting screen I built for Frankenstein the Cart, all salvaged materials except half a dozen screws:

I dump the compost in, lift the handles on the near end in an underhand grip, and shake.  The well-digested compost from the bottom of the heap goes right through and whatever is left in the screen will go back in the heap for another year or two.  I moved the upper half of the heap onto a tarp in the yard because it is mostly undigested, and it will go back into the enclosure today.  Here is what ten minutes of shaking the sifter provides:

I filled a big plastic trash barrel, and dumped a couple of big mounds onto planting beds to be distributed and worked into the soil when it is a little less muddy.  It took me two shifts to sift it all - the first day I moved the top of the heap and sifted half of it, and was pretty wiped out from the heavy upper body exercise and unaccustomed sun exposure.  I took a day off and did the rest of the sifting in about an hour, then took a long bike ride that afternoon to balance out the exercise.  Today I move the heap back into the enclosure and go work out at the health club this afternoon.  I am like some kind of vegetarian organic gardening health nut computer geek cartoon.