Bill's Worm Poop and Tony's Worms

Toward the end of July, I worked on prepping a batch of poop for Bill. The worms I hand-picked out of the poop went into a Glad container of damp paper for Tony. When I had the poop and worms all set to go, I decided to put the Glad container of worms inside a cardboard box. I can't even explain why.

The next morning, getting the stuff rounded up before heading to work, I snapped a photo of Bill's worm poop. It's pretty.

And then I picked up the worm container to find that a lot of the worms migrated out of the plastic container to lay around it on the cardboard.

I scooped those buggers back into the Glad container, snapped the Glad lid tightly on two of the four corners and made my deliveries.

Last I heard, those worms have been happily thriving at Tony's in the worm bin he has set up in his shed.

Here's a photo of the compost and worm bins Tony got from a seminar on composting in his city back in June. Those worms are now in Tony's Wriggly Wranch.

Tony Gave Me an Apple and Called it Worm Food

About Septemberish, I gave Tony a couple loads of worm poop to help fill a trench in front of his house after he had a footing removed. Maybe it was July, because I remember telling Tony that after his BBQ, he should unload the corn cobs and husks into the trench and then fill the trench in with dirt. Whatever worms in his soil would have food to eat, plus the corn cobs and husks would help aerate and promote growth in the soil. Win-win, right?

Tony was so happy with his worm poop growths, aka Tony's Impromtu Garden, that Tony left me a worm food offering in my cubicle November 25th. And it looked like this:

If you are wondering what was wrong with this apple, well, you aren't the only one. I asked Tony the same thing. Turns out, Tone was just trying to bribe me into giving him more poop!

I brought the apple home. While trying to collect a decent image of it, Spooky, the cat, found the apple quite fascinating. Spook sniffed the apple all over.

That black blob is Spook's head. The "baldish" area is Spook's inner ear. Spooky's not bald otherwise. Except for a weird spot on his right hind leg. I'm still scratching my head over that one.

Then Spook decided the apple must be a toy. And so he batted at it. And the apple rolled around the table.

My uprighting the apple to collect an image was a sure sign to Spook that the apple was indeed a toy and he proceeded to paw at it.

Finally, I achieved a focused image. Then I washed the apple and ate it. And Tony? THIS is what worm food looks like. Turns out, cats don't play with worm food at any point after decomposition (i.e. it's been eaten).

And after an apple sits out on a table overnight at room temperature, getting all brown, shriveled, and nasty, it's even more worthy of being called worm food.

Tony's apple was the first food addition in Adam's second story, 112610.

A Batch of The Offspring's Poop is Ready to Go

I put a second story on The Offspring September 12th. Each time I fed The Offspring, I made it a point to look at the first story and give it a good stir. It's a nice way to determine if I'm supplying enough paper when feeding the second story. If the poop in the first story is too goopy with moisture, I add more paper to the second story. Simple enough, eh?

I fed The Offspring's second story 8 times over three months before I decided that it was time to do something with the castings in the first story. December 12th, I removed the second story, put the second story in the catch bin, and took a look at the poop.

The poop was compact from the weight of the second story and was pretty damp. I gave it a good stir with my trowel.

And then I left the uncovered poopy bin by the other worm bins.

And it sat there for nearly a full month.  I think I stirred the poop around twice in that time.

Last night I removed the inorganics and transferred the larger uneaten clumps of paper from the poop into The Offspring worm bin.

And that left me with a 16-quart container of worm poop.

Not Tony's gonna get this in the morning. About a month from now, Bill's batch should be ready.

Tony's Impromptu Garden

A few months ago, maybe back in September, Tony had a trench in front of his house that needed filling. I had a couple of worm bins of poop I could unload. It was a perfect match. Sure as shit, stuff started growing out of that worm poopy trench.

Tony was smooth enough to talk his girl, Clare, into collecting images of the growth over the past couple months. I plan to get these progressive images up one of these days. Meanwhile, we'd been scratching our heads over what the hell could be growing and determined that it must be some sort of squash.

Here's where you should imagine me leaning back in a high-backed leather chair, puffing on a pipe Camel while wearing a smoking jacket with leather on the elbows and a reminiscent thought bubble over my cartoon head as I thought back to

the squash I'd eaten
and the pulpy,
stringy gunk
and seeds
from those squashes
I'd fed to the worms
over the past couple years or so.

It was narrowed down to summer squashes like zucchini or yellow crookneck.
Or winter squash such as carnival, butternut or delicata.
Of course, there are the squash I may have eaten and forgotten about entirely. Like the acorn, which I suddenly remember having eaten.
So really, we just had it narrowed down to squash.
Thankfully, I did my undergrad biology/microscopy thesis on Curcurbita maxima, otherwise I'd have never believed Tony and Clare's leaves as squash since tomatoes were most prevalent thus far.

Based on Tony's verbal description and the photos Clare graciously supplied today, it looks like they might be growing some of these:

That shiny thing in the bottom of the image isn't a squash, it's a quarter. You can use it as a reference for squash size. Or you can go by the fact that the butternut in the back weighs in at 3.53 lbs and the giant pickle-like delicata came in at 1.03 lbs.

It'll be cool to see if Tone's growths grow up to be 100% identifiable. Considering that it's getting below 60°F regularly now, we might not see that happen. Keep your fingers crossed. Better yet, get on Tony's ass about putting together some sort of impromptu greenhouse for the sake of us being able to determine that we were right about the fruits being squash.

Anyone have an old swing-set they want to get rid of? I've a truck I can move it with.

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In other real-time news, since I haven't posted in nearly 3 weeks:

1. I fed the worms some of Ali's liquid diet lemon halves from the big bag outside 2.5 weeks ago. Then I put the little bag I'd been keeping in my fridge inside the big bag and put the bag outside. More than a week ago, I brought that bag inside to feed the worms. Because I was so concerned about my snake, Sleepy, being constipated and having a wacko lesion on his neck, I forgot about the lemons. The bag of lemons has been sitting on the floor of my kitchen (kicked toward the slider -- it's cooler there) since then. I'll feed some more to the worms this weekend. On a side-note, trash compactor bags are pretty heavy-duty; the lemons haven't leaked and I can't smell them. I'm sure though the lemons are quite disgusting by now.
2. How Chuck's grape-bits went over with the worms is still in my "things-to-post" queue.
3. Outskirts had another uber-wet worm-bin issue where she saw that there were again INCHES of water in the catch bin. This time around, I nosed around because inches of water just doesn't make any freakin' sense. Turns out, she was soaking all of the paper she was giving her worms this whole time. Remind me, and we'll discuss this later.
4. Bill's Banana Peel's baggie, other than visits by yours truly, hasn't seen much action. Because I can't stand the texture of bananas, it's pretty much full of apple cores from Fuji or Ambrosia apples I eat for breakfast. Again, Bill sucks. He says he doesn't want to touch the exterior of the bag as he's sure it's covered in "rotten food scum".
5. Kimberly hasn't coughed up any of her shredded paper. I need to get on her about that.

Speaking of things I need to get on, I need to get onto posting more regularly. News is lengthier than the post.

Oh, and judging from extremely quick glances of recent mud-run photos observed today, Cang has hot legs. Just sayin'.