Country Mouse Monday: compost -- clippin' and a-flippin'

My Mother's Day was my favorite probably since 4 years ago when a swarm landed in our apple tree -- I was outside from 9 until 2:30, happily busy about the garden, moving lightly from task to task. It's a little funny to say out loud how much I loved the day, since I spent it neither with my own mother nor with my own child, but alas, these ARE the true confessions of a Country Mouse.

Yesterday was all about clippin' and flippin'. Compost, that is.

Of course, I did other things, too, but throughout I knew that I was organizing my tasks loosely but quite deliberately just to feed the compost, just to build the pile to its ideal size.  

And listen: can you really blame me? I mean, just about a year ago, I had back surgery to resolve a herniated disc that crippled me for about 8 months and required months of gentle recovery. Months! So is it any wonder that I took such tremendous pleasure yesterday in moving buckets of fresh compost to the garden beds and turning them in myself, stepping happily on the shovel? It is any surprise with how much delight I clipped faded borage and poppies and alyssum into the compost, layering with pitchforks-ful of more-done compost and sprays of water to build a good, tall, hot pile?

Being able to move under your own steam, to create in the garden, is such deep physical pleasure.

If only this could be my entire exercise -- besides hiking, that is. I would love a life of this labor, of spading soil, flipping compost, every single day.  Somehow using my upper body strength to move the earth seems so much more worthwhile than endless chaturangas to maintain yoga arms that are just for doing more endless chaturangas.

Ah, a life in the garden: food for the body in so many ways!

So yesterday, feeding the compost -- that hours-long process of clean-up and meditation, clipping and flipping -- was so much feeding of me, really.  All that time invested into the soil becomes the food we grow, becomes the food the bees and we eat, becomes that nectar we savor, from the hive and from the plate.

No wonder it was such a good day!

This morning I'm delighted not to be sore at all from yesterday's long hours of good work, just deeply satisfied, pleased with all that I survey, evidence of our hands at work.  And the compost is already a little shorter, but still stands tall, hot at the core, cooking already.

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