For the Love of Compost

I’m not ashamed to say I love my compost pile. I love the mystery and magic of nature that transforms my household garbage into black gold, that rich, crumbly soil that looks like chocolate cake. I love the industrious earthworms that wriggle in and out of the pile. I love feeling like I’m taking care of Mother Earth every time I throw out some eggshells, coffee grounds, and lettuce that’s seen better days.

My dad’s compost pile in Floral Park, the suburban/urban town I grew up in just outside of New York City, was a thing of beauty. Constructed of bricks and sandwiched between the picket fence separating our property from the M’s (where Miss Nita lived) and the greenhouse he’d erected against the garage, he maintained that pile with focused concentration, babying it with amendments, liming it occasionally, turning it…that compost was so wonderful, when we sold the house after my dad died, my sister took away as much as she could in garbage cans the evening before the sale was to go through!

In Huntington, we built the first compost pile for John’s family. His mother thought it was dirty and foolish. John liked the idea. We copied my dad’s use of discarded bricks but unfortunately built it around an old locust tree. We had one happy locust tree and it always took a while to get enough compost for the garden. But I had wonderful fat, wriggly earthworms there.

Here in Virginia, we started the compost pile even before we dug the first hole in the garden. A friend tells me that’s the true sign of an organic gardener – she builds a compost pile before she puts one single plant into the ground. My new pile is in the woods, just beyond the flower garden. We used some of the cement blocks leftover from construction and created a simple outline.

I tried to turn the pile last fall, but a swarm of yellow jackets was on it and they chased me away. I see now the lovely black gold soil under the top layer and I’m counting the days before I can add it to the vegetable garden.

Last night when I walked Shadow, we started a creature investigating the pile. I didn’t catch a good look at him but from the size and motion and the sound of branches snapping I think it was a raccoon. In Huntington, John surprised an opossum one evening who was dining on a banana peel in our compost heap; last night’s scavenger found the pineapple core I’d tossed into the pile, and the only remnants this morning were a few scattered fragments of pineapple on the path leading to the pile.

I love composting. I feel so connected to the earth, to my farm, to my garden and to my food.

Do you compost too?

Today’s photo credits...top picture is from Morguefile; bottom photo is my flower garden next to the driveway this past fall. The compost pile is just behind the pine trees.