Changing our Compost Pit into a Fire Pit

When we first built our Georgia houses, we had many visions of gardens and flower beds.  At home, a compost pile is a big part of our recycling and soil building program, so we built ourselves a nice brick sided compost pile with a heavy black plastic liner.  While we did end up with some good soil, in the months we were away it proved to be an ideal trellis for a variety of weeds and vines. We began to realize that since we weren't here during the real growing season, we needed to cut way back on our gardening.  Then we were forced to sign up for garbage collection and were given an enormous garbage can.  So, long story short, the compost pile became obsolete. We continued to weed it, however, and it became just another weeding job.

Today, we decided to make better use of that nice brick, so we began to dismantle the compost pile.  While Ron moved brick, I shoveled the nice dirt from the compost pile and recycled it into my sugar cane flower bed.

You can see the tops of the sugar cane starts in neat rows in this little flower bed.  Creeping thyme is in front, a blueberry bush in the upper corner, and garlic along the right side under a cherry tree.

Now we have a firepit overlooking the lake and a place to burn fallen branches.

The leaves are really starting to turn color now.  These Bradford Pear trees are always beautiful - usually red, this year more orange.

The oak trees are a variety of color this year - ranging from maroon to light yellow.

The Sweet Gum are always a brilliant maroon or deep brown.

It's a beautiful time of year, and nice for working outside as it is cool enough to enjoy the exercise, but warm enough for shirtsleeves.