Bokashi-fied

Colin Berry, despite designating his blog a comment-free zone, is still pursuing subjects of topical interest, such as household waste.

He, like I, is following Lila das Gupta's Telegraph 'Re-cycle of Life' blog, which is showing some improvement after an irritating start.

My compost bin is doing well and devouring our raw vegetable waste by the metric tonne (as we're in France). Once we get to one cubic metre of waste, we can add a product to speed up the composting process so it takes less than four months before we can throw it onto the garden. We have noticed the marked reduction in household waste that having the bin has resulted in, although we still have to throw away cooked waste.

Help may be at hand however. Lila has drawn our attention to the Bokashi bin, which recycles cooked waste into compost. It's a special bin, has a handy tap you can drain off liquid fertilizer from, and enables you to reduce even more what goes into your conventional wheelie.

The drawback is that it's a pricey addition to the keen green recycler (at £85 for these, or starter price £35), and how the government thinks it can encourage people to go green when the equipment costs an arm and a leg I don't know. Instead of increasing rubbish taxes (I mean, taxes on rubbish, although the ambiguity is fair), it should sponsor the distribution of such bins together with communal compost bins for high rise areas, and individual ones for urban areas. I don't know if communal ones would work - you know what idiots people are, especially when it comes to bins, but such initiatives should be tried.

I like the idea of the Bokashi bin. I don't particularly want to buy one in the UK and have to keep buying expensive bran so I'll investigate the possibility of finding a supplier here. We already recycle glass, paper, plastic, polystyrene and raw food. If we could also recycle cooked food and meat, our wheelie would have to look into early retirement!

Sunday Bloody Sunday

Having had the ResidentAdo ruin the previous evening, the day started tensely. However, the sun was shining and I had plans for the garden, especially having been bugged by Monty Don talking about allotments on the tele yesterday. With the RA out for the morning, we were able to fall upon Botanic, with plans to max out the credit card on plants, seeds and a compost bin.

I wanted to renew some of the lavender in the front, and turn some of the weed-infested garden into a vegetable plot in the back. The compost bin has been on my mind for years. Twice, I've applied to have one from the local authorities who were promoting them as a freebie, only to hear nothing afterwards. Botanic had some lovely ones for 50Eur - 400litres, a discreet dark green plastic and shovel hole at the bottom.

It was Grandmother's Day today, so Botanic was heaving, and actually getting hold of the compost bin of my choice was not easy. In fact, I was given a 700litre one, and only realised it once the 125Eur it cost had appeared on my till receipt. I wondered how I could have possibly spent so much money on a few packets of seeds and lavender!! Needless to say, they had none of the 400litre ones left in stock, so my hanging around risked being for naught until the salesman offered me the one on display. I immediately agreed, but said he didn't need to dismantle it as I have an estate car. Come to think of it, maybe I should have asked for a discount!!

Unfortunately, we couldn't get digging in the garden after lunch as I had to take my eldest to a bowling party. Since it was so far, there was no point coming back home, so the rest of us went to Palavas, to the Parc du Levant to wander round and cross the lagoon to the pretend castle. The bowling place had been so noisy and revolting that it was a huge relief to be outside in the sun, watching (very) young mothers and fathers with their children in the kiddie park. There was an interesting spectrum of Palavasian life there - smoking mothers, fathers decked out in bling, grandparents worrying over other peoples' children and looking disapprovingly at seemingly careless parenting.

Eventually, we went back to the bowling place and suffered the noise and smell for a further hour while my eldest did himself proud on the alley coming in a close second after leading for much of the session. The party was then removed to the sofas, and the cake brought out. It was a quite revolting synthetic chocolate affair, and I couldn't agree with birthday boy's mother who was in raptures over it. Finally, the presents were opened and we were able to leave that hellhole.

Once home, I fell upon the garden digging and weeding in preparation for planting. We couldn't plant today as it got dark before we had finished, but the plot is looking promising. J took his power tools to the useless fence and made a more useful plant support fence out of it.

ResidentAdo has been absent for practically 25 out of 48 hours, has made no apology for ruining our evening last night, done bugger all to help in the house, and, as far as I'm concerned, is on "Going home to mum warning", and I don't care if it is in the middle of the school year!

The iron has entered my soul.