Garden

Monday, 8 February 2004

The weather has finally turned spring-like. There are masses of gorgeous purple crocuses just outside my study window (ah, foresight! I love bulbs!), which contrast rather beautifully with the pale yellow daffodils that are just beginning to open. Elsewhere we have grape hyacinths and snowdrops in full swing, and early tulips just beginning. Yes, the garden is in general a horrible weedy mess (I haven't touched it since January, and it'll only get worse now that the weather is warming up), and the front is still festooned with the debris left over from when we got some windows replaced in - eep! - November, but my bulbs are doing me proud. They are such tolerant plants.

Meanwhile, a crisis is steadily building in the compost bin.

Compost is the most amazing thing ever. Really. It's impossible to exaggerate how cool it is. We feed the bin diligently all year, and it quietly turns our kitchen scraps into gold. Every so often I tip the whole lot out onto a bit of old carpet, sift the stuff that's ready to go and give the rest a good mixing so that it rots evenly. What I get from my sifting is a barrow full of lovely rich brown crumbly stuff with which to nourish my plants. Just like the books tell you.

I still haven't got over the fact that it works. There was an unfortunate incident early on where the bin's entire contents got transformed into an anthill (fascinating to watch, but they had to go - and I'm not squeamish, but the memory of picking dying ants out of my underwear after I'd finished dealing with the problem is not among my more cherished). However, by dint of paying a bit more attention to the mix of material we put in, we now have an eminently functional heap.

Of course, it helps to be not squeamish. Rotting vegetable matter isn't exactly visually or olfactorily pleasing, and it does tend to attract quite a range of beasts. The ants, all things considered, I didn't like (haven't have a problem since we moved the bin ... fingers crossed), but most insects don't bother me. Worms I positively approve of - even when they breed and congregate just under the lid in upsetting little nests like miniature maroon spaghetti. Last time I turned the heap I disturbed a mouse in the process of giving birth - she shot out from under my spade, all moist and scared and dishevelled, and disappeared into the hedge. I found one of her babies seconds later, a tiny thing that I thought was an unusually large, pale pink slug until I looked more closely. I put it under the hedge too, in the hope that its mother would come back and find it.

(I'm such a sap.)

But it's been months now since I did the whole turning and sifting thing. The bin has been getting fuller and fuller, until there's barely any room to put the kitchen scraps. It does rot down a bit between additions, but not fast enough in the cold weather. And I can't turn it, because I have a recurring problem with tendonitis in my right arm, and the movements required to dig and sift are of precisely the sort I should be avoiding. I did poke around a bit with a fork before adding the last consignment, but our kitchen receptacle is brimful again today and I'm not sure there's space for it.

Perhaps I'll try doing it in stages. I could manage ten minutes at a time, maybe, with rests in between.

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