What I learned about life from cleaning out the compost bin

Life is beautiful, and the line between life and death is barely identifiable.

Life perseveres: even in the darkest, densest parts, new life appears in sprouts.

Only a spade can be called a spade. A half-moon edge-trimmer, for example, is no real substitute for a spade.

When home composting, one doesn’t have to be super vigilant about alternating carbons and nitrogens – nature has a way of making a variety of mixes work.

This being said, nature favours a bit of variety and miscegenation: sameness clumps together in a sticky and smelly kind of way.

There really is no excuse for using plastic to make those little fruit identification stickers. And if you think they are so small that no one will notice that you put them in the compost, think again: they are like little bright sirens of fakeness, demanding to be removed and properly disposed of. Same goes for twist-ties.

Plastic really is humankind’s worst invention. But it works well for containing compost...

The impulse in nature to protect the possibility of new life is strong: the shells of eggs, and the stones of fruits take the longest to let go.

Living things that appear strong, in the end, are deeply fragile. No evidence of all those thick broccoli stems I thought would never decompose.

I thought I was powerful and noble for growing my own vegetables; making my own soil is even better.

Brown is the truest organic colour. The ‘Green Movement’ should be the ‘Brown Movement’.

Sometimes, life is the pits. And if you’re an avocado pit, I recommend going to rest at a commercial compost site, instead of a domestic one. Or maybe you should have just stayed in the tropics.

The closer a dead thing is to life, the harder it is to witness. The stuff near the top of the bin was hard to deal with; the older stuff, at the bottom, for which life had passed longer ago, was at peace. It smelled beautiful and healthy, and it was rich and black.

Some things just need more time: put them back into the compost bin, toss it around, and give it up to the Goddess of All Things Pass for further contemplation.

Sometimes, plumbing the depths is necessary, and in the end, not as scary as you might think.

In the end, we are all one.