Have you ever broken-up with your boyfriend over compost? You know where he wants you and the front garden to look and behave a certain way and pretend to be nothing but blossoms on top and attractive enough to host exclusive parties. But you on the other hand just want to party with the folks beneath the surface — those fellows who break everything down and work tirelessly without appreciation to build a healthy system. Those little wiggly bad boys — the complex microbial indigenous workers — the protozoa, bacteria, fungi and the pink wiggilies who know how to chow down on waste material and poop it out — making it into healthy life giving soil I want to leave to my kids. Yeah, I know you are saying, I’ve heard it before: “Come-on Celina just stick to your back-yard bin, tucked behind the lilacs and be happy!”
But here’s the thing: I grew-up in a household where “compost it” was mom’s favorite mantra. And let me tell you, we compost everything!!! Leftover food? Compost it. Garden waste? Compost it. Old newspapers? Compost it. Dead animals? Compost them (different pile). My old horse?!?!? Compost it! Mental health dramas? Compost it! Bad break-ups? Compost it! The possibilities are endless! “Break it down to break through!” “Decomposition becomes recomposition!” “Death and Decay creates abundance and life!”
Yesterday for example my mind was all messed-up (OK so in truth, you can tell, my mind lives in a constant state of messiness). I mean, the sap is running in February?!? I am all for a sweet love month, but the maple trees don’t start running until at least March or that is what my body clock registers. So I was feeling out of sorts and mom took one look at me and said, you guessed it: “compost it!” She noticed the snow had melted around a pile of leaves under the maple tree and she handed me the sled and a rake and said: “here, you’ll feel better.” And sure enough as soon as I started raking up all that wet soggy rich biomass and dumping it on top of the food scraps I began to feel grounded again. My mind began to sink into the beautiful, rich, earthy, crumbly, black, life-giving soil. I thought of all the energy, nutrients, and structure in these leaves, and how in a month or two all that would be left behind and would be an enormous population of living breathing organisms, the most complex forms of carbon on their way to becoming a soil ecosystem capable of sustaining plant life.
It's like a history and a future of transformation all in one pile.
And I started to dig in the warm spots and turn the soil dreaming of all the pink wigglilies and their families moving-in and gathering around this microbial feast. Oh the yummies and the piles of poop for us to sink our little shoots in to grow a feast for our family. And I thought about all those unrepresented valiant workers beneath the surface sequestering the carbon and breaking it down to deposit into healthy life forms for us. And how their efforts ensure our family has the clean air to breathe, water to drink and food to nourish another generation of homo sapiens.
So the next time your boyfriend screams at you in the morning: “you put coffee grinds in the house plants?!?!” You can simply smile to yourself and think: “it’s party time!”
Thank you for sharing your caring through your writing. They are both gifts from God and you are the perfect vessel.
Yes!! Compost it!