There's a Box?

I live in a community that has CCandR's--which I appreciate most of the time since we have no rusty yachts parked in driveways or twenty-foot RVs hugging a property line and wrecking a view.  I admittedly chafe at restrictions on composting, clotheslines and other items I consider earth-friendly and green.  It's unbelievably hard to change them too.

So I just think outside the box.  Clotheslines aren't kosher?  Who says you need a line?  I have four patio chairs that are perfect for holding jeans or towels as they dry in the blinding sunshine.

In redecorating the laundry room I discovered that I'd stashed (and forgotten about) two multiple-skirt hangers that now hook over a sugar maple branch and are perfect for pinning up smaller items.  Like tees and undies. Which multiply quicker than bunnies during summertime's daily morning hikes and dry even more quickly in the Nevada afternoons.

I have plans to introduce the shiny silver metal to my can of Apple Green spray paint. All the better to camouflage my rule-bending hangers in the tree, my pretty.

Thanks to the Bombshells, I've finally managed to make quick-and-easy compost in our dry Nevada climate.   In the past, I've succeeded turning unwanted sod into compost by letting it sit in an old whiskey barrel through the winter.  In our desert climate, the trick seems to be keeping the materials damp enough to decompose.  Last Spring I tried using a reject trashcan which I turned regularly.  I had hopes.  F-A-I-L pretty much describes that result.

Armed with a hammer, some very long nails and leftover lumber from a fence that blew over at the Queen Mother's I cobbled a simple compost bin that's normally enclosed on all four sides but is easily opened at two ends.  Earlier this week, I shovelled a cubic yard of chicken-coop-goop turned compost into the raised beds.  And I've started a new pile of chicken straw which will soon be augmented by autumn leaves mulched into small pieces by the hens.  Multi-purpose, those girls!

Fortunately when these homes were built, backyard chickens were all but unheard of so no one thought of forbidding poultry.  The Bombshells are sort of flying under the CCandR radar (not that they can fly very well).  The coop is tucked invisibly away from any neighbors who might object and the neighbors who do know about it are well paid in fresh eggs.

I guess I'm sort of stretching the rules a bit, but I'm not breaking them.

Much.

I still use turn signals, drive the speed limit in school zones and brush my teeth twice a day.

Iconoclastically,