Flowers and Compost

This weeks featured piece is the Flowers Bath Tray.

Detail of Flowers Bath Tray.

What a wonderful way to warm up on these chilly days and find your own oasis.

Imagine for a few moments luxuriating in a warm bubble bath, enveloped in the soothing aroma of perhaps lavender. There is nothing but the sound of silence, the flickering of a candle nearby. All your muscles are becoming heavy as you relax and feel all your cares washing away. In front of you is the beauty and elegance of this Bath Tray supporting your soap, facial scrub and loofah. Deep sigh.

Your bath awaits.

This is a pretty Bath Tray that will add character and warmth to your bathroom décor. As always I have applied several coats of quality varnish to make it splash proof.

Mother's Day is Sunday the 13th May. Perhaps you can find something for your Mother amongst my Wildwood Art gifts. It is an opportunity to give your Mother something that is hand-made, Australian made, crafted with love and care.

Hot Composting has become a favoured method of ours to create an enriched garden soil. The Berkeley Hot Compost method is, in our opinion, hands down the best. You can see videos of it on You Tube.

We use a combination of our own grass clippings, shredded paper, as well as our own 'starter kit'. This is simply our own kitchen scraps mixed with wood shavings from my studio. It quietly composts away in a separate kitchen composter which sits behind our green house.

Tumbler style of compost bin for our kitchen scraps mixed with saw dust.

This gets tossed in to the larger compost area when we are ready to make a big batch of hot compost for the wicking beds. It helps to attract the worms as well as adding goodness to the compost. You will find that it eventually reduces down by approximately two thirds.

This is how it starts off - layers of grass clippings and shredded paper together with the compost from our kitchen scraps. Sometimes we add cow, horse or chicken manure into the mix as well.

Hot composting is a three week process. It is turned over four days after it is first put into the composting bay. Then it is turned every 2 days thereafter. The temperature must be kept lower than 65 degrees celcius otherwise it becomes too hot. If this does happen simply add more carbon to it i.e. paper, saw dust to cool it down. Each time it is turned over spray it all fairly liberally with water.

Three weeks later we have this beautiful compost ready to use anywhere. 

I am ever aware of the connection I have with trees. In particular the pine trees which became the pallets that I craft my timber wares from. Here is a poem for you to think on while running your bath:

"Trees purify the air;

they also purify the mind...

if you want to save your world,

you must save the trees.

            - The Trees of Endor