As the compost turns

As you might imagine, I’ve been mighty dilatory about turning the old compost of late. So today I decided I’d get to it. I’m feeling better, and physical activity helps sharpen my mind. And something sure has to.

Because even without being turned – i.e., aerated – the stuff in the bin smelled mostly like nice, sweet soil, I figured it was time to screen it. Which of course is a somewhat arduous process.

So I was out about that for a while. And being me, I started to suffer doubts. Was I doing this right? Was it all right that the screened stuff – putatively compost itself – was moist when I put it in the finished-product bin? And I couldn’t help but notice that a lot of stuff that seemed mighty compost-y was sticking together in big clumps no matter how I munched it with my gloved hands or whacked it with a hoe. I’ve got too many twigs and branches in there, which show small sign of degrading in less than geological time, and they tend to hold the more dirt-like stuff together.

Then it came to me, like Boethius, to seek consolation in philosophy. After all, if I succeed totally and brilliantly, what do I wind up with? Dirt. Dirt deluxe, to be sure: premium quality dirt. But withal, dirt.

And if I fail utterly, what do I have? Well, dirt. If not such a high-toned variety of dirt.

Indeed, I thought, what are we but dirt rearranged? And in time, no matter what prodigies of plasticization we perform, at shocking expense, under the name “embalming,” we’ll eventually be sorted back into dirt.

At which point I realized philosophy was becoming more depressing than consoling, so I decided to pitch it back in amongst the organic fertilizer. It had served its purpose.

And of course I’m not failing. Indeed, I produced perhaps ten more pounds of nice, crumbly, dark soil-like substance which I can only presume is compost. Which is the point, yes?

I can’t say how efficiently I’m producing the stuff. No doubt I could do it better, which is to say, faster. In any event I’m not likely to become a world power in compost production any time soon. So?

It’s still gratifying. And I have compost!

Sadly, Emma, who was helping, doesn’t find this as entertaining as it might be. For one thing, being in a more mellow frame of mind this evening than is often the case I didn’t do much of the stamping and blaspheming which usually accompanies my forays into handymanhood. Indoors, of course, whenever I so much as look as if I’m going to pick up a tool she goes right into her pen. Whereas when she’s outside she seems comfortable lying sixty feet away laughing at me, apparently confident I’m too distant to conveniently destroy her. Not that I ever would destroy her, or even threaten to.

I’m not Squeak, after all.

Popularity: 1% [?]