A friend dropped me a message yesterday to ask if I’d like three compost bins. I rarely say no to offers of free stuff for the garden so I said I could go to pick them up today. Imagine my delight when I realised that two of them at least are 600 litre bins. That’s quite a bit larger than your standard dalek bin so I was thrilled.

Once I’d lugged them down to the vegetable garden I put one together. It was something of a conundrum at first, but luckily I found the instructions on the internet, thanks to an Ecosia search. I then started moving compost into it.

If you’ve ever turned or moved compost you’ll know that it’s damned hard work and I gave up once the bin was three-quarters full. I was on the brink of sloping off for a cup of tea and a rest when I remembered a BBC Outlook podcast I’d heard recently. In it a young man who had taught himself to play piano on a paper keyboard said ‘you can always do a bit more than you think you can’. So with his words ringing in my ears I made up the next bin and began to fill that from my current palette heaps too.

I haven’t finished. I’m 67 for heaven’s sake and I’ve put on more weight than I care to think about over Christmas and New Year. However, I’m thrilled to bits with my free bins. They’re going to make compost-making a whole lot tidier and better organised. Tomorrow I intend making up the third bin and dismantling the current messy palette bays.

Thanks for passing the bins on to me Katie & Gordon. I’ll make good use of them.

Homemade compost is producing some monster cauliflowers. Look at the size of this.