What is this?

An awesome playhouse for the kids? An office? A mother-in-law apartment?

Nope. It's a chicken coop.

I found it at diggingfood.com, a Seattle-based blog about growing your own food, cooking with it, and generally remembering that your plot of land in the city can be put to good use. She's one of the featured home-gardeners in this month's Sunset magazine.

I have been obsessed with gardening lately. Haven't, uh, done much, but I am trying to get my act together. I was delighted to learn that my mint and chives returned after a weird winter. I just bought a few kinds of lettuce, some peas, and more mint. I recently sat on a a plane to NYC and made use of the 5 1/2 hour flight to read THIS and Vegetable Gardening Simple Steps To Success
and made a list of what I want to plant and when.

I have a lot to do in addition to this. I bought 2 cone compost bins from a co-worker and now I need to figure out how to actually install them (I need to bury part of it in the ground). I have been reading thecompostbin.com, too. We have a lot of food waste (as most people do) which is something I am trying to figure out and reduce, and then also just make better use of the scraps. I wish I could say all of this is motivated by my inner hippie, but honestly, I just hate how quickly the trash piles up at our house and I hate lugging bags of compost to the backyard.


To help with this new composting program, yesterday I parked THIS in the new kitchen. I just need to remember to actually use it. Tossing eggs and coffee grounds into the garbage will be quite a habit to break, I am afraid.

Is anyone gardening yet? Planted anything yet? Growing anything yet? Are any of you going to grow anything for the first time this year? I would like to hear about it. Oh, and send good garden blogs my way, please.