To Rot and To Thrive

"From my rotting body, flowers shall grow and I am in them and that is eternity."

-Edvard Munch

As I'm a bit young to remember the Exxon Valdez in unfolding detail, the current disaster spiraling out of control in the Gulf of Mexico has the feel of something nearly biblical in scope, and decidedly Old Testament at that. My horror at the greed and incompetence of the responsible parties has morphed into an outrage at forty-six uninterrupted days of criminal acts being visited upon the residents of the Gulf Coast. The mass slaughter taking place against the backdrop of one of the country's richest ecosystems is stupefying, and as our hapless government fumbles turf rights and places calls to James Cameron for help, I find my nausea rising to an almost unbearable degree. I'm rarely one for populism, but I wouldn't mind seeing the board members of BP drenched in congealed petroleum and run through the streets of Mobile on rails.

I suspect that these emotions have been heightened due to my recent proximity to the more natural elements available to twenty-first century urban dwelling Americans. Despite moving from the beach and closer to the urban center of San Diego, our new location has provided us the opportunity to live among carefully-tended fruit and citrus trees, circling our respectable back yard and flanking the front. In addition, my wife and I have turned our shared disdain for suburban lawns into an opportunity to carve three garden plots from the backyard, thereby maximizing the hours of direct sunlight we receive.

We don't live in the country by any means. Rather, our sheltered back yard has something of the feel of the prototypical English garden - a small patch of green to brighten and soften the thumbprint of civilization. Early mornings, while the shade still looms large over the yard, I try and sit low to the ground on a sloping chair to read, enjoy the bird songs and keep one wary eye open for trespassing weeds. Staying level to low-hanging blossoms and high grass blades does something good for the mind and the soul. With the smell of wet soil from overnight dews and the insistent calls of hummingbirds in the air, this place is quickly becoming a haven from the outside rush of Southern California.

If witnessing the slow growth of apples, plums and nectarines helps assure me of the constant progress taking place every day when green matter is left to fend for itself, the steady rot of other green and brown materials into rich earth suggests the ways in which progress can also move backwards. And this is when we arrive at the glory of compost.

My grandfather tended several large compost bins on his sprawling property in Winnebago County, Wisconsin, and I remember being quite impressed with the fact that he could add any number of grass clippings and food items into the mix (I was often tasked with tossing egg shells into the bins, so much so that to this day I automatically equate composting with cracked egg shells). When we decided to join a local CSA and begin receiving weekly farm boxes of produce, the rapidly accumulating volumes of discarded carrot tops, beet tails and browning lettuce edges convinced us it was time to make the move towards controlled decay.

Rather than invest in a shiny new compost bin, I made a quick trip to the hardware store and concocted my own using a basic plastic garbage can, with holes poked into the sides for air circulation and the bottom sawed off completely. Into the bin went our scraps.

That was in July of 2008. In the nearly two years since, we've added what must have been barrels worth of natural waste, trimmings and clippings into this average-sized can. Aside from a few heaping shovelfuls here and there for gardening purposes, little has been removed. And yet the can has never threatened to spill over the lid, continually settling itself deeper and deeper into a murky mix of natural matter.

Clearly, I find this whole thing to be pretty awesome. And given the fact that we had nurtured our can of rot for almost two years, there was really little question of not trying to transport the compost to our new home this past February. Given the texture of the matter at hand and its insistent olfactory presence, moving our compost did require a bit more preparation and skill than, say, moving my reading chair. But with the help of a shovel, many plastic bags and a very good sport of a younger brother....

.....we did manage to ease the compost......

....scoop by scoop.....

.....into proper handling materials.....

....and from the damp air of Ocean Beach to the relatively drier mesa of University Heights.

After giving everybody a chance to settle into the new surroundings, I set about justifying the compost relocation by using several rich shovelfuls in the creation of three new garden plots in the back yard.

It may have much to do with the copious amounts of sunlight and the decided lack of damp, moldy ocean air, but I suspect our nutrient-rich compost has been an equally important factor in determining our garden's rapid growth and success.

To watch kitchen clippings and yard scraps darken, soften and rot, to allow fruits and grasses to naturally congeal, to turn once-firm items into gentle clumps of black matter, and to then return these materials into the ground in order to feed and bring forth clumps of heirloom tomatoes - well, this process is the absolute antithesis of corporate wide-scale exploitation of the earth. As our culture continues on its heedless path to degrade the land, air and water with non-biodegradable materials, and as we feed our collective jones for cheap and useless possessions by confusing plastics with natural resources, our land and our lives suffer. Succumbing to the addiction of organic matter is one small way out of the morass.