Carpentry and Composting

This week, the weather decided to take a turn back towards winter instead of forward towards summer (don't you love how spring can do that?). Tuesday was lovely and warm, but then wednesday struck and with it came the rain. In fact, a whole day of rain, complete with cold southerlies. 'Ah ha,' I thought, 'the perfect day for an inside project', so I turned my attention to building a bookshelf.
Its all part of an attempt to help my parents make their house feel like home. Their 'living room' is currently rarely - if ever - used, and some furniture re-arrangement might just fix the problem. So, a bookshelf. Apparently furniture and wood are both quite expensive in NZ, so I thought I would make it out of wood we already have around, which sent me scrounging around in the garage. I sourced some wood, measured, planned, re-measured, cut, planned, re-cut, re-planned, got outside input, cut a bit more, planed some wood, began screwing it together... apparently, buildings things takes some work. In the process, I was taught a few useful things by my father, such as how to use the table saw and how to plane wood, something I am not very good at. Yet. I must say, I didn't expect to be improving my woodworking skills out here, although it is fun. Two days and quite a bit of work later, the bookshelf is nearly finished and painted quite a vibrant shade of orange. Perhaps I'll include a picture here soon.
Ah yes, and the composting. Our compost bins have been in a bit of trouble. Back when the weather was sunny, I dug out the bottom layer of our three section compost bin and attempted to dry out the very anearobic mush that had formed in an attempt to get it to turn into real, nice compost for the garden. Of course, then it decided to rain. Two days later, I've finally managed to put together a respectable compost heap from a combination of all three compost bins, from fresh to mature (but soggy). Having identified the main problems of my parents' heap as 1) lack of carbon and 2) lack of drainage, I made a bamboo screen at the bottom to allow water to leave the pile, and sourced carbon from anywhere I could thing of to feed it. This included my mom very kindly shredding paper in our pathetic over-heating paper shredder, gathering sawdust from my bookshelf-building, and gathering dry things from around the house and garden. Dry grass? Couldn't hurt. Eggshells? Why not. Old corn stalks? Perfect.Now we have what I hope will be a very successful and warm compost heap. I even found some useable dirt in the middle bin, so we're off and away and adding to the garden all the time!
Oh, and the radish sprouts came up today, after only five days in the ground! Luckily they seem to like rain and cold weather. I also just love the capacity of radishes to make any gardener feel accomplished. The always come up, they sprout fast, and they are just generally delightful to have in the garden. To radishes! Hurrah.