THE JOYS OF COMPOSTING

Things sometimes converge strangely and fortuitously, in J-land as well as life, don't you find?  I have been planning an entry on the subject of composting, mulling it over as I have worked my own compost bin - extracting glorious finished stuff to work into the garden soil, adding mulched leaves from last fall to start the pile cooking anew.  Then, just this morning, I opened my email box to find a note from my pal Tank Gurl asking about compost - should she be putting her garden byproducts into a compost pile, instead of bagging them up for the city to remove?   The answer, of course, is a most emphatic "YES!"

I have been composting for as long as I can remember.  My parents (avid gardeners, both of them - my father grew vegetables and fruit trees, my mother grew herbs and the most amazing flowers) composted all through my life with them, and it was a natural step to start my own compost heap as soon as I was no longer living in boarding school or university dormitories. 

Composting is actually, yes really, one of my chief pleasures in life.  Does this sound as if I have a wretched life?  Well, maybe - but there is something about taking what would be regarded as trash and seeing it turn into living soil, full of earthworms and unseen beneficial bacteria, that is not equaled by much else.  It's working with nature, to create life.  Or, as the I Ching says:

-- "Man's work with Nature that furthers Nature's aims is the work that rewards him the best."

My compost is composed of garden waste (weeds that have already made seeds are put in a pile way in the back of the yard, to remain there for unknown ages, until the seeds are cooked out), grass clippings, fallen leaves that have been mulched so they're in smaller pieces, kitchen scraps of a vegetable or fruit nature  (no meat scraps), eggshells, coffee grounds, tea bags.  My favorite form of compost container is a chicken wire pen, but as we live in an area with critters who would pull such a pile apart, here I have a bin of plastic slats and  removable top.  The finished compost is pulled out of the bottom of the bin - not the most convenient or accessible method, I have to admit.  My old bin was destroyed in Hurricane Isabel, when a crape myrtle tree was knocked over onto it.  I'd had it since we lived on Cape Cod - we actually moved both bin and compost down here.  Imagine that. 

The best site I know for more information than you could possibly absorb is on Journey to Forever.  Both the preceding picture and I Ching quote come from that site.  Once you get into it, you won't want to leave for a long time - be forewarned. 

Last year I wrote an entry about Tim Dundon, "The Compost Guru."  He built a 30 foot-high pile of compost, over a period of thirty-five  years, in an L.A. suburb.  It's an amazing story, one that really hit my soft spot.  You can read his story here, on the wonderful Path to Freedom site. In the sidebar to Tim's story are more compost links. Be sure to browse the picture galleries, from which I give you a few samples:

    Whole TREES are growing in this pile.

   This is a shot of vegetables growing ON THE HEAP.

Tim's story has a sad ending, however.  He had built this heap on a piece of land owned, but unused, by a cemetary.  He had offered a large sum of money to buy the land, but had been refused.  Despite the fact that a good compost heap has absolutely no offensive odor at all, apparently his neighbors had long wanted to find a way to get rid of him.  Last month his pile was bulldozed and spread out on the land, which isprobably going to be used for development.  Tim is selling his own land and moving elsewhere.  To start afresh (so to speak), I'm sure.

So, you have an environment to tend in your own back yard - put your hand in the hand of Mother Nature, and build that glorious heap!