In a healthy relationship, the cast-off scraps of little battles are thrown into the pile, where time begets a natural heat, slowly turning the parts of the relationship that don't work into something from which better things can grow.

But when the relationship isn't working right—when the pile just can't make enough heat on its own to break down the thorns—sometimes it seems feels like you need professional help.

I moved to Oregon to be with Carmela a few months ago after an overwhelmingly wonderful courtship. Romance is its own sort of special fire, bright enough to blind.

But it wasn't a relationship. Not until I moved here, to Eugene, a sleepy college town, where I rented a beautiful home with a yard big enough for a garden. That's when real life began. Soon after I moved here last spring, I started my first compost pile.

It wasn't much. Just a Tupperware tub with some holes drilled in the bottom. I'd store up food scraps in a plastic tub in the fridge, then take them out every week or so and toss them into the bin. Sometimes my compost bucket would eat up all the scraps in just a few days, turning them into a nearly black, crumbly mess. Every once in a while it would be too wet and I'd have to throw a straw or leaves in to balance it out.

The NatureMill PRO XE indoor composter was delivered a few weeks ago, right around the time that Carmela and I first went to the counselor. It's the new model, which has a stronger, more efficient motor and heater that makes it possible to make mincemeat out of anything—even meat (or mince). This will save a step, I thought. No more caching food scraps indoors for a weekly dump; I'd just toss bits in as I was preparing food.

But an indoor composter doesn't work out so ideally in practice. Not because the NatureMill is hard to use—you can flip up the styrofoam lid at any point and toss in more scraps, although you should give them at least a day to get mashed in—but because even when I'd gotten the required sawdust, baking soda, and scraps mixed in healthy balance, it would still fill my kitchen with the strong odor of turbocharged decay.

And when the balance wasn't right, just a few seconds with the top popped could be nearly overpowering. I'm not terribly sensitive to the odor of compost or even trash, but there are times when one would rather not have to smell it. Like when making dinner, for instance. So my scrap collecting returned to the plastic tub, stored until after dinner was over.

Still, I let the NatureMill work its magic for a couple of weeks, ignoring its periodic whine as its internal actuator turned over the compost inside, even when it occasionally spooked my dog. (In fairness, Porter will bark and growl at nearly any aberrant noise that he doesn't understand as a signal for food.)

Dumping the finished compost was as simple as pressing a button and waiting about 20 minutes while the S-shaped arm pushed the compost from the hopper into a simple terra cotta-colored plastic bin below. The entire house filled with the vaguely sexual smell of composted food.

I was left with a brown lump of stuff that was indistinguishable from its original form—a good sign. As compost from the machine is still relatively fresh, NatureMill recommends putting it outside to cure. I plomped the steaming goop onto my garden, now covered in leaves and tattered corn stalks, where I hope it will seep into the soil for next year, even if it's looking increasingly likely that I won't be here to plant it.

We'd been having problems pretty much since I had arrived. Problems that we'd try to till under, give time to decompose on their own, but which would invariably insinuate themselves back into our relationship with the sweet smell of decay.

The counselor was our best chance, we thought. We needed outside help, some extra heat. It turned out to be too much heat. We barely made it through a single session before the counselor told us we should just break up, that we weren't going to be able to turn the relationship into something fecund and sustaining.

We got into the car, stunned, and drove home to surrender.

There's a place for the NatureMill, I think. And I mean besides outside in your garage. The ability to turn things like meat or even pet waste into compost is something that regular old compost piles just can't—or at least shouldn't, bacterially—do. If you're the sort that wants to turn every last scrap of waste back into your garden, I don't know of a better option. It's also entirely possible that one could get the smell more under control, especially by avoiding the composting of meat or dairy products.

But for most people, especially people with the outdoor space for a compost pile or bin, it might be better to save the four hundred dollars for something else. The NatureMill, with its smells and noises and need to be washed down occasionally—not to mention the trouble that will come when one eventually runs out of the little sawdust pellets they provide—isn't easier than doing it the old-fashioned way.

It's an industrial machine for a primeval process. And it works. Works very well. But I think sometimes it might be better to let nature take its course, push everything under a pile out of sight, and pretend the whole world always smells sweet.

The best part of this the Panthera Leo mower isn't the electric-powered design, or the recyclable materials it's made of. No, it's the LCD monitor and sensors, which work together to tell you what speed and height you should mow at, plus inform you when you're on too steep a hill or about to hit an object. And the mower lasts two hours on a single charge.

Jalopnik says Husqvarna plans to put something similar into production within five years (basically, forever). But seriously, I would have driven this thing to school every day if I had one. Trust me. Oh, and check out more pics over at [Jalopnik].

That's pretty much the whole story. There are no before-and-after shots of the mower, which may have in fact been the tractor shown below. There's no photo of the no-doubt dumbfounded dude, a gardener, as it happens, in Croatia. There isn't even an explanation of what the grenade was doing in the yard, save for the statement, from the Zagreb police, that "someone had thrown the grenade into his garden."

Know your enemies, buddy. Apparently, competition for this year's All-Croatia Flower-Growing Tournament is already heating up. [Croatian Times via Asbury Park Press (go Springsteen!)]

The Book Time, from Electric Machine Works in Japan, is more on the silly side, but I'm embarrassed to say I've been waiting for a machine with this functionality. This guy turns the pages of books at the push of a button, so you can stay flopped on your side and still expand your mind without having to expend even the tiniest bit of energy it takes to flip a small piece of paper. Its creators are hoping it'll find a home in libraries or retirement communities. They've somehow overlooked my incredible laziness.

MIT's networked gardening robot, pictured above, was the first step towards Wall-E style computer takeover, leading to a planet full of lazy slobs. Don't give in, readers. Turn your own pages. Or buy a Kindle, whatever. [AP and New Launches, photo by AP]

The data then syncs with EasyBloom's web database, where it digs through 5,000 different plant species to either find plants that would do well in your conditions or diagnose why the plants you have aren't growing better.

Priced at $60, the EasyBloom runs off AAAs, connects to PCs (and Macs soon) and is engineered for unlimited use. And if it works as well as it claims, it seems like a great buy for the heavy gardener who's looking to up their game. [EasyBloom]

For about $90, Toscano will ship this guy to you in three macabre pieces. When assembled, they'll cover a 31½"x19½"x8" stretch of earth. That is, until the day he and his buddies claw their way completely to the surface, eat our brains, and take over the planet. Then they'll be everywhere, doing their zombie gardening with a silent stoicism, and you'll be the garden gnome. [Design Toscano via Boing Boing Gadgets]

The user places the PlantSense GardenGro sensor in a spot right next to the plant, and 24 hours later, plugs the USB hub into their computer. The sensor's data will then upload to PlantSense's website, which doles out tips like “water more,” or “pile on less plant food, your peppers are getting fat.”

The service is a little expensive—$59.95 for each USB stake. But isn't that a small price to pay to be able to munch on your own home-grown Roma tomatoes, your black thumb overcome by the wonders of technology? [EverythingUSB]

Product Page [Via bookofjoe]

Product Page [Via uber-review]

In any case, these Bionic Gloves also have better wrist support, better grip strength, and strategically placed grip pads. Not a bad buy if you're a farmer. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Bionic Gloves via Book of Joe via Sci Fi Tech]

Product Page [Collections, Etc., via OhGizmo]

We're wondering just how effective this could possibly be, where the product's website promises best results if you use the Bird Chase Laser in low light. Couldn't we accomplish the same thing with a well-aimed laser pointer or two?

Anyway, we'd like to try this out on some rabbits who are chewing up our prize-winning Gizmodo garden, moseying away afterward as if they were searching for a bag of Doritos or a pawful of chocolate chip cookies. If this doesn't work, well, we'll just have to get out our elephant gun and go for the pink mist. – Charlie White

Bird Chase Laser [Bird B Gone, via boingboing]

So it appears that both computers and bean enthusiasts can live in peace and harmony. Looks like a dude named Johannes Hjort planted some beans inside his keyboard and watered them. After a few days, the beans started to sprout and grow within the keyboard. Some started to lift the keys up like a creature emerging from a sidewalk. Very radical. It appears no dirt or soil was used, so I wonder what would happen if you tried growing other sprouts inside a keyboard. What about hollowing out a mouse and planting some things inside that? I see a whole new form of tech emerging from this: beanipherals. Genius.

Live Keyboard [via BoingBoing]

The other day I was out in a garden helping someone plant a bunch of flowers and seeds. I was on my knees for a good hour and when I got up, my knees were hurting bad. Today I came across this insanely silly looking, but obviously useful garden stool that attatches to your butt. You strap it on, prepare to look rediculous, and now have a tail. But if you can get over that, you'll be gardening in comfort from now on. The stool has a pole with a spring on the bottom to allow you to just instantly plop down wherever and garden. If you have bad knees but like to do things like gardening that require you to be on them all the time, this stool is for you. $48.95 it will run you not including humility.

Wearable garden stool [Popgadget]