Come springtime every year, there’d be a predicable domestic spat. I’d say the compost was ready. She’d look at it and retort, “No, it’s not: you can still see bits and tell what it’s made of.” (Actually, two shes – mother and daughter.) “Then you’ll have to wait another year for it to finish to your specifications,” I’d shoot back, only to be told we couldn’t wait that long. And so on.
Part of this seemed to question my very manhood. I was, after all, the one doing all the work, from collecting the bags of leaves around the neighborhood and dumping the kitchen garbage in the covered bins to changing the rabbit cages, in large part for their precious, nitrogen-intense pellets.
Well, most of the work. The red wigglers would also do a large share.
Still, I suspected that if we waited as long as they wanted, all of our organic matter would evaporate.
At last, I had a flash of genius. I’d slowly sift the pile, trowel by trowel, and whatever came through the screen turned out beautiful. They approved and used buckets of it on the square-foot garden beds as fast as I could provide them. The part that didn’t fit through the screen was also beautiful, along the lines of woodland detritus with flecks of brown eggs. I put that aside to decay further, perhaps to be spread as mulch in July or August.
The motion of sifting itself can become a kind of Zen practice as you admire the material before you and the thoughts flitting through your awareness.
This movement’s like panning for gold, as I found washing my dishes in the glacier-fed river below Mount Shuksan. Back and forth, back and forth, with all that matter getting smaller and sparkling more in each round of swirling.
All the peach stones are tokens from our cheap peach bonanza after Hurricane Irene ruffled nearby orchards.
The squirrels plant a lot of our wild black walnuts.
Listen to all the cardinals and mourning doves.
Plastic, in flecks, is inescapable.
How loud, those geese overhead! Me, I’d be more stealthy.
We eat a lot of eggs.
