Creating compost

My affinity for trash, old stuff and recycling is probably why I am enamored of the whole concept of composting. I love the idea the of converting debris from the garden into a rich, earthy mixture that provides nutrients needed to support the next round of new growth. It doesn’t happen quickly and requires considerable churning and turning. My backyard has mountains of debris in various states of decay.

I’ve made a commitment to spend a few minutes every day enticing this mess of leaves, stalks, grasses and rotten veggies to move a little more quickly into a new state—into compost. I spread the stuff out, turn it over, layer it with dirt and eventually I hope to get it into semi-manageable mounds that will become rich and black by spring. Meanwhile my backyard looks pretty much like a garbage dump.

There’s a different kind of composting going on inside my house. Last week I began to revise the draft of a manuscript that I finished a while ago. It is a story I have been committed to putting down on paper since I spent time in Africa a decade ago. It has had more than enough time to move on from a raw and messy state into something richer and more worthwhile, but unlike the outside stuff where, given the right conditions, transformation happens, the manuscript needs way more tinkering.

I’ve churned and turned it, over and over. It has moved from non-fiction to creative non-fiction to historical fiction, from third person to first person and back again to third person.  It won’t leave me alone.  It does not make steady linear progress. Instead it moves in fits and starts, each sentence and paragraph begging for attention—for a word or phrase to be removed or changed or inserted in a different place. It demands more than the outdoor debris and it commands way more of my time and my head.

It’s good to have two compost piles to alternate working on for the winter. Focusing exclusively on either one could be crazy-making.

By spring, it will be time to evaluate progress and toss out the stuff that is just not going to morph into something new. Some will go to the landfill, some will disappear with a touch of the delete button.