I got an email from my friend Bonnie Wood the other day.
After this year’s fire season I know we are all happy to see the beginning of the rainy season and the clearer skies of Fall. Unfortunately, on my daily walk through my neighborhood on these crisp Fall days, I have again been choked with the smoldering, thick, stench of burning leaves. My son, who’s sadly afflicted with asthma, covered his mouth and held on to his cramping stomach barely able to breathe. What can we do he gasped feeling ill. And that’s when it came to me. Why not encourage people to compost their leaves rather than burn them.
Yes indeed Bonnie, let’s encourage people to compost!!! I’m a compost fanatic! I have a compost can in my kitchen that is as big as my regular trash can!
The other day I caught my kid putting a banana peel in the trash can -
me: “What are doing!!! Are you kidding me!? That’s compostable!!!! It goes in the compost can!!! Don’t ever let me catch you doing that again! Don’t you know the difference between compost and trash? Haven’t we taught you better than that?! Don’t you want to make something of yourself some day? You continue to behave like this, young lady, and you’ll just end up living in a van down by the RIVER!!! Is that what you want? Huh?!”
kid: “jeez mom, chill out. It’s just a banana peel.”
Just a banana peel, just a pile of leaves……. These are the things that compost magic are made of! Black gold…. Texas tea!
There really is no good reason to burn leaves - there are so many great uses for them. In my yard they either create a warm ‘blanket’ for my perennial bed OR they go straight to the compost pile OR I mix ‘mulched’ leaves into empty planting beds to break down through winter.
Composting can be made complicated, but I use a super simple formula - layer of green/layer of brown. Green is kitchen waste and grass clippings. Brown is leaves. Stir occasionally and water occasionally. So simple! Now if you compost on a larger scale, like our organic farmer friend, the main component is poop!! Yep, critter poop is the magic ingredient - chicken, goat, sheep, worms! Check out this compost?!!! Isn’t is beautiful?!
So how about community composting? The Yreka Community Garden has these fantastic compost bins and they’ve already been working with the City of Yreka to come up with a plan that could be ready by spring ‘09 where local landscapers and homeowners can drop off organic materials for composting. So Cool!!!
Yes, Bonnie, there is a Community Compost Plan. It exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Compost! It would be as dreary as if there were no Bonnies……
