The Turning of the Heap

"It was a warm, blustery afternoon in late March. The air hummed with the distant drone of four-wheelers and baseball practice. In a backyard, the girl approached the overgrown heap with trepidation and a strange sense of eagerness: would it still be frozen solid? Had all the happy bacteria of the long-lost summer vanished in the wake of bad, slimy nasty bacteria cousins? She reached out with the long-handled fork and poked the seemingly sleeping pile of vegetative remains...."

And out jumped happy compost!

Yes, folks, that's right. My heap survived the winter. The done pile now looks and smells like dirt, which means I don't have to go out and buy a pallet of compost from the local nursery. Finally! My two year project has paid off. And, the working pile is well on it's way. I found my container of compost enhancer (which is a mixture of kelp and dried happy bacteria) under the pile of random gardening implements that I had wedged into a corner of the porch, and sprinkled away on the working side. (It looked a little like micro-grain kitty litter.)

Underneath a layer of winter-dried straw and old plants from last year's garden, the layers of straw, shavings, chicken poo, leaves and pulled weeds are slowly melting down in the working compost heap, into a lovely dark earth. I swear, nothing smells quite so lively as good compost. It fairly screams, "Plant something in me! I am ready to GROOOOOWWW!!! Yeehaw!"

Once I dig out the done pile, I'll start tossing this year's fresh manure and straw/plant wastes into that side of the composting area and in a couple of years, that one will be the "done" pile. I can't wait for next year: The current working pile is chock full of goodies and is HUGE so hopefully, if it doesn't burst into flames in the summer heat or succumb to anaerobic bacteria attacks, next year I will have loads more of happy compost at the end of the winter. A big pile of compost will come in handy, as I always seem to expand the garden each year. My goal is to eventually have no lawn, just the random grass patch in the midst of a lovely, large garden...and so, I need compost! Lucky for me, I seem to have an endless supply of brown and green wastes to put into untidy piles near the garden.

Now all I need is a local supplier of a half ton of bark mulch....