Today I did something I've been thinking of for weeks. The day after Christmas, I went to spot where the Christmas tree lot had been, and found several people taking things down and disposing of the remaining trees. I asked them whether I could have all of the hay they had laid on the ground, and they told me to help myself. I ran home to grab a rake and box of garbage bags and filled eight bags with a very clean mixture of hay and dried pine needles. The kind gentleman told me he'd be happy to drop off a truckload at my house tomorrow instead of taking it to the dump. I'm very excited for several reasons:

1) I don't have to forage for cardboard or newspapers for a long while.

2) I don't have to shred cardboard for a while

3) All of the cardboard I would have used will now be recycled and thus used for new paper products, saving trees.

4) I can quickly and easily start new worm bins!

Yippee!