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Today is a sad day in our family, as we should have been rejoicing the birth of a new baby girl. This was my niece's due date. Instead little Merida died during the beginning of the 5th month of pregnancy. No reason that anyone can see; she was perfectly formed when they forced the delivery back in June. It is impossible to understand. My niece has been taking it very hard, which is totally understandable. We live a great distance apart so I have been limited in the support I can offer. My thoughts and prayers have been with her and her family every single day. But on this hardest of all days I wrote a poem for Merida and posted it on my niece's Facebook wall.

Tonight my niece and I took a cupcake decorating class at the Webster Groves Recreation Center. There were 10 of us in the room, which was about 4 too many for the space. It was crowded and hard to pass the decorating materials around. Added to that was the Zumba class going on in the next room, and that made it hard to hear.

The instructor did her best with the conditions she faced. She had prepared chocolate, vanilla, and spice cupcakes ahead of time. Then she made vanilla, chocolate and caramel frostings as well as several frostings with a more substantive base for making colored additions to our cupcakes. And lastly we worked with fondant, dying it and shaping it into roses.

As I looked at all the tools of the trade she had brought along for us to try, I realized that this would be a fairly expensive hobby to get into. It kind of reminded me of scrapbooking and all the stuff I have in drawers upstairs. And I could also see that cupcake decorating takes a lot of practice if you want to do it well. So I think that this is not something I will jump right into. DC Cupcakes has nothing to worry about. It was fun to be out with my niece for a couple of hours though. We rarely get to do that without either my sister or my great-nieces being along.

Today my niece Julie came over with her two daughters. Molly is in 8th grade and required to do a Science Fair project this year. She decided that she wanted to do something with vermicomposting. Jim and I have had worms eating our garbage for over 15 years now. Because I go into classrooms and talk to the students about the composting process, having worms to take along was a great way to illustrate how it all works. Plus the kids always get a big kick out of seeing the worms.

I have a mini vermicomposting bin I use for the classroom, and it is empty when we aren't doing any talks. So I let Molly build her own worm bin with it. As she followed my instructions on how to get it started, Julie snapped away with the camera. However when it came time to transfer some of the worms into the new container, no one wanted to get their hands dirty. So I scooped out some of the compost and some of the critters and put them in their new, temporary home. It was probably for the best as I was gentle in moving them. After that Molly added the grapefruit rind I had saved from breakfast to get the worms going.

They took the bin home and Molly will feed the worms and monitor their eating habits. The worm bins are truly full circle recycling. You give the worms your food waste, thus saving on landfill space or sanitary disposal costs, the worms create a compost that can be used on your plants, and any extra liquid in the bin can be diluted with water and used as compost tea. All organic!

Cordelia, who is 8, thinks the worms are disgusting and was dismayed with the fact that some were going to be living in her house for awhile. She calls them little snakes. She had a close encounter with a big snake at her grandparent's house, so anything that reminds her of that experience is taboo. I hope that as she listens to Molly talk about the project and begins to see what the worms do to help the environment, that she will feel more kindly towards them. If nothing else, she probably will enjoy having them eat her garbage.