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Ever since I've lived in a house, I've had a compost pile. I can't imagine living without one. Fruit and vegetable scraps get mixed together with lawn trimmings, decompose, and turn into something that makes growing more fruit and vegetables easier. 
For the past 15 years, my compost pile consisted of a circle of hardware cloth standing upright behind a forsythia bush (or in our old house, a rhododendron) into which we put kitchen scraps, clay (dug up while gardening), grass and partially decomposed leaves (in spring). Twice a year, we turned the pile onto a new pile (behind a neighboring bush) and then sifted compost out of the bottom of the old one. This worked nicely, with minimal effort, to provide compost for gardening twice a year. But recently my back yard neighbor reported that she's seen rats (or signs of rats) at her house and thinks our compost pile may be contributing to providing them a good home. Although we don't put any meat or dairy products on the pile (which do tend to attract rodents and also smell bad), we don't want to be The Neighbors Who Brought the Rats, so we decided it was time to try another approach.
In March, after studying all the different compost bins available online, especially at Clean Air Gardening, we ordered the compost tumbler shown above (the big green thing peeking out from behind the forsythia) since it sits completely off the ground (except the legs) and is completely enclosed (with small air vents on top and bottom) and so is virtually rat-proof. 
It also came recommended by the National Home Gardening Club.
The new bin has now been in place for two weeks, with the contents of our previous compost pile in it, being turned every couple days. With the nice weather (it's Earth Day 2007 as I write, a beautiful sunny day), we were finally able to mow the lawn and add lots of grass clippings to the mix. The ideal mix is 75% grass/chopped leaves and 25% vegetable matter, so we now have a good combination for decomposition. We'll stop adding to the bin for the next 4 weeks (saving kitchen scraps in a covered bin in the garage, which is my only concern about this particular method of composting -- what to do with kitchen waste while composting is underway?) 
According to the literature, if we turn the bin every few days, we should have useable compost after 4 weeks. I'll post pictures of the contents each week, starting with this one taken yesterday, April 21 (picture at right).
April 24: I was so excited to open the compost tumbler lid this morning and see steam come out (steam!) that I thought I'd post a picture of how broken down the contents have become already, in just 3 days (picture at left).
April 28:
Here is a picture after one week (at right).
Grass is no longer identifiable as grass and everything is turning darker and
becoming more compact. The bin was about 7/8 full when I started; it has now
compacted down to just under half full. The temperature inside the bin has not been as warm for the past couple days as it was before -- most likely because the past two days have been cloudy with some rain. Hopefully it'll heat up again inside and outside the bin tomorrow.
May 5:
Well, this was a slow week, compost-wise. The bin never got hot and the contents
don't look appreciably different than they did a week ago. In fact they look
chunkier than ever, maybe because all the things that weren't chopped up enough
to begin with (like mango pits and the whole pineapple plant that I threw in
after buying it on a whim at Home Depot last
fall --a real pineapple!-- and then watching it die in my living room window
over the winter) are more obvious as everything else around them decays. And
something must be happening because now the bar in the middle of the bin is plainly
visible, and the bin is becoming harder to turn, as the heavy lump of stuff now sits down in one end of the bin. 
To speed the composting activity up, I should
probably move the compost bin from behind the forsythia, where it is now mostly
shaded, out into the sun. But who wants to see the neighbor's compost bin smack
in the middle of their yard?
May 20:
Four weeks from the day we first dumped in grass clippings and let the composting cycle begin, the stuff in the tumbler is more or less useable as compost. It still has lumps of not-completely-broken-down organic matter in it, but it's nice and dark and rich-looking, and good enough to dig into the soil and provide a nutrient base for new plantings. I'd prefer to see the black crumbly stuff that is always shown in gardening articles, but I don't want to wait another 4 weeks or move the bin out into the open sun, so I'll settle for this. Today, I emptied out the contents and dug some of it into the ground as I was transplanting daylilies. We'll see how they do.
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