Years ago in my Master Gardener classes, I was absolutely transfixed by a lecture given by Malcolm Beck, Compost Guru Extraordinaire. I fully realize that I am sounding like the worst kind of gardening nerd, but I couldn’t stop talking and thinking about Malcolm’s words in the following weeks, probably months. His knowledge alone was awesome, but his passion was inspiring. It wasn’t just about recycling food and yard waste, although I’m all about recycling. It’s about the natural cycle of organic materials. It’s the circle of life thing. It’s a metaphor for life! Oh, ix-nay the oaning-gray, it was a joke for pete’s sake.
photo by stockvault.com
But here are the cool lessons composting teaches us (a different post will go over the ABCs of composting; this one’s more philosophical):
- Things die. And they’re supposed to.
- We don’t need to hang on to everything. These old leaves? That was so yesterday. And I’m so done with that banana peel.
- Some things should be thrown in a pile. My Marc Jacobs boots, not so much. Now, who is scoffing right now? Just because I’m a gardener and I love the smell of compost doesn’t mean a girl can’t look cute in the off hours.
- LIfe is meant to be mixed up. My white boy 15-year-old son sits next to Michelle Jiang in geometry, and next to Ubaldo Reyes in world history and the mix is fab. So loosen up. You can sprinkle your coffee grounds all by themselves around your potted plants and it’ll be just fine. But mix those coffee grounds in the compost pile with orange peels, yaupon clippings and old fertilizer and SHAZAM!! The result is something people pay for at nurseries!
photo by dreamstime.com
- Even crappy stuff can change into something beautiful. Moldy tomato? Well, gross. I’m not so much of a garden geek that I want to stop and sniff that. But throw that baby in the pile and in a few months’ time, it all melds in together to make the most glorious, sweet smelling beneficial manna from Heaven. Overstatement perhaps, but not by much. And besides, this lesson makes me more optimistic about my thighs. So there’s that.
So, I didn’t invent composting, I haven’t written a book about it, and I’m certainly not the first writer to extol its virtues and life lessons. It’s just so dang cool that every now and then, I’m blown away by the unlikely beauty of the humble compost pile. Not everything in life is meant to have surface beauty like my Marc Jacobs boots. But pretty much everything in this world is a bigger part of something else, and when you dig a little deeper you can see how it all works together. Pretty dang cool.
My Marc Jacobs Boots
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