Breaking Glass Therapy

Some memories drift across my brain like a simple whistled melody.  Others are more like being suddenly run over by a marching band.  I had two of the second variety this morning.
I killed a coffee mug.  It splattered glass all over the kitchen and while I was cleaning it up I said, "We're just normal people.  We have supper."
I spoke a memory of my father saying that in a grouchy voice when I was a teenager.  I had asked what we were having for dinner and that somehow ticked him off - my use of dinner instead of supper.
Whenever Papa rose his voice - or worse - spoke in that angry voice that wasn't loud - big fear filled my chest and tears started filling my eyes.  I had to be careful not to let those tears spill because that would only make things worse.
Let me assure you, my father never hit me, or grounded me, or punished me in anyway except with his voice, his words, and his eyes.  I would have rather he'd knock me across the room.
Sometimes, my transgressions or my possible transgressions were obvious.  "If I hear there was alcohol at that party, you might as well never come home."  Or "Don't you even have enough of a brain to come in out of the rain?"  Or the really horrible, "Don't make me ashamed."
But why, this morning, while on my hands and knees with a brush and a dustpan, did the dinner vs supper memory kick me in the head?
And you know what I thought?  I thought, "Well that was just a foolish thing to terrify your daughter over."  It was't until then that I realized my father's anger that day had absolutely nothing to do with me.  He probably had a headache, or maybe a bad day at work, or who knows.  But it wasn't about me.   Still whenever a man raises his voice, I'm frozen with that fear.  Hmmmm.  I think I'm over that now.

The second memory came while I was looking at the floor with my less than acute vision, trying to find any little shards of glass my first two sweepings had missed.  Suddenly I was about five years old with my little broom and dustpan and I was "helping" Mom sweep the kitchen floor.  She had a nice pile of crumbs and stuff in her dustpan and I didn't have much at all in mine.  I asked her why she could find more dirt than I could and she sort of laughed and said, "I have years of experience."
That one was a happy memory of Mom and me.  I haven't had enough of those lately.  Just think!  I probably saved myself years of therapy with one broken coffee mug.

I'm grateful.

Some Good Shit

I am assuming that anyone who reads Fay's Of Life already recycles metal, glass, plastic and paper. If you don't, please stop right now and spank your butt.  However, there's more you can do to spare landfills and sewage systems while getting black gold for your garden.  You've gotta compost, Baybees!  Composting can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make it.  I am currently doing number two (on a one to ten simplicity scale, of course.)
The easiest way I've ever composted involved my chooks and sheep.  Back in the day, I had a beautiful cedar hen house, with a goodly number of girls happily living there.  They ran around and ate bugs of all varieties and anything green they could get their smiling beaks on. Such beautiful, big eggs they gave us with such bright orange yolks!
I also had a goodly number of sheep, who would also eat anything that grew within reach.  Both groups ate any vegetable or fruit scraps I had, trimmings from the veggie garden, plant-based leftovers, and the veggie/fruit trimmings and stale bread from the organic grocery where I baked.
Then they pooped.
The poop went onto a pile where it cooled down a bit before getting tilled into the huge veggie garden, causing the plants to be incredibly happy and produce lots of veggies which the man and I ate and shared with the chickens and the sheep.   See how that works.  Sort of a big circle.  Veggie - chicken/sheep - poop - soil - veggie.
I know, I know, it's brilliant, but trust me, I'm not the one who invented it.  Mother had it all figured out.
Luckily, one can still easily compost without the benefit of sheep or hens.  Now I have a big black container.  If you have so much money that it's clogging your pores, you can buy a fancy schmancy compost bin.  You can also use a garbage can.  Gourd knows, the suckers are made of plastic and will probably still be here when the dinosaurs roam the planet again, but they exist and you might as well put one to good use.
First cut the bottom out of it and find a nice place in your yard to put it.  Put it where it's going to soak up sunshine and get mighty hot inside.  Rot likes hot.  And ya gotta have the rot.  Cut some vents in the sides because rot likes air, too.
Next, forget you have a garbage disposer.  When you peel veggies or fruit, put the bits in a container of some kind.  If you have more money than you know what to do with, send some to me.  Then buy some fancy schmancy compost collecting crock.  Otherwise a coffee can works fine.  You aren't going to keep it around long enough to stink up your house.  Then you put all compostable stuff in that coffee can and empty it in the compost bin every evening after dinner and before the news.

GOOD FOR THE CAN

any veggie or fruit bits

egg shells that have been crushed

stale bread (go ahead and tear it up if it's a whole baguette)

coffee grounds and paper filters 

leftover coffee

leftover wine (hahahahaha. . . who has leftover wine!)

tea bags

bad birthday cake

BAD FOR THE CAN

any part of a dead animal

gravy (it's got dead animal in it)

eggs 

anything so toxic that you shouldn't be ingesting it anyway (sweet drinks, soda, candy)

anything dairy (good gourd, I hope you know what dairy is)

You will also add stuff like lawn clippings (which of course you will not have poisoned with chemicals because if you have you can't be my friend), leaf mulch, the soft clippings from your hedges,  the flowers your sweetie got you that have turned yucky, saw dust, twigs.  Basically you can compost all the stuff you might have been burning or putting in those big plastic bags.  You want to keep the composting material moist.  You don't want it sitting in water, but you don't want it to dry out, either.

Go to your garden center and get a bag of lime.  Not fancy schmancy granulated schmanulated lime, just plain ol' powdered lime stone. (The limes that go with margaritas can also go into the compost.)  Every now and then sprinkle some of that lime on top of what's in your bin.  Use enough to make the surface look like about 1/4" of snow fell onto grass.  The lime helps stuff decompose and that's what we're after here.

Now here's the real poop on how to make great compost!  You need manure.  Preferably bird or ruminant manure.  Find a friend with chickens or sheep, goats, or cows, and ask them very nicely if you can have some shit.  They will probably tell you to come and get it.  If you have no friends of this quality, you can buy some composted manure at your garden store.  It's a sad thing, but you can do it. If you know of a park with geese, you can go scoop up goose poop.  Many people will stay far away from you and snicker, but no one will stop you.  

GOOD POOP

cow

bull (that's a boy cow)

steer (that's a sort of boy cow)

sheep

goat

chicken

turkey

parakeet

alligator

turtle

gold fish

llama 

OKAY POOP

horse

pig (only happy, free range pigs)

BAD POOP

dog

cat

people

raccoon 

Why are some poops better than others?  I'm glad you asked that, Cindy.  Ruminants, such as cattle, sheep, and goats, have four stomachs and cameldae, such as llamas, alpacas, and camels, have three. This gives their bodies a lot of opportunity to digest seeds and stuff.  So while you can use happy pig poop and horse shit in your compost, you might just end up with some dandelion seeds in it.  However, the compost will probably get hot enough to burn most of them off anyway.  

I reckon birds grind up any seeds they eat in their gizzards.  By the way, do you know why birds eat tiny rocks?  (FInd the answer at the end of this educational essay.)  Usually, if you are collecting crap from feathered friends, you'll get some straw, or newspapers or something with it.  That's just a bonus that can go right into the compost bin. 

You don't want to use the bad poop because that's just gross.  That poop contains e. coli and other nasty germs.  We like good, clean compost. 

Newspaper, corrugated cardboard, and paper that isn't shiny and that is printed with soy ink, can all be easily composted, however it only adds bulk and not much in the way of nutrients.  But what the heck.  You may also want to add a shovel or three of good looking dirt into your bin.  Use some real dirt that has some life in it.  If you find worms,  that's good soil!  That will kick up the life in your compost more quickly.

You need to stir that compost up.  You want to make sure the soggy cucumber gets mixed in with the leaf mulch and the llama poopy.  How often you'll do this is equal to your desire for great compost.  Every 3.6 weeks should do it if you're lazy.  The easiest way I've found to do this is to lift the bin right up off the lawn and move it over a space then sort of reload it randomly with your pitch fork.  

YES!  Composters get to use pitchforks!

You'll want to keep a eye on what's happening in your compost.  Does it look happy?  Is it well mixed?  Is it moist but not runny?  When you stir is a good time to remove things such as corn cobs or avocado pits from the mix, or anything big like that that you thought might, but actually isn't breaking down.  You will notice that your compost is hot or warm.  That's good.  It should be. There's a lot of stuff going on in there. 

When will it be done?  I'm glad you asked that, Timmy.  It will be done when you're ready to use it, actually.  You are your own compost king, so that stuff will be done when you say it's done.  One day you'll be stirring your compost and you'll notice that the stuff on the bottom is looking like dirt.  That's because it is dirt, so use it.

However, it will be optimum when it looks like beautiful, black loam.  You can get as anal about this as you want.  You can buy a fancy schmancy sifter if your excess money is causing you to lose sleep at night. Or you can just sort of pull out the bits that aren't beautiful, black loam yet.  Or you can just till it all into your garden, what the heck, it'll breakdown eventually.  

You can find all sorts of recipes about ratios of brown to green to manure, blah, blah, blahhhhh.  Like I said, you can make composting as crazy as you'd like.  I don't believe in recipes.  They slow me down, but if you actually measure your flour when you bake bread and stuff, you might want to read one of the more OCD guides to composting as well.

I hope you'll all remember that though at first, composting may seem a little dirty or nasty, Mother Nature created composted to be a beautiful activity between gardeners and their gardens.  There is nothing shameful or sinful about composting.

So get out there and shovel that good shit.  You'll be glad you did.

* answer:    because they can't eat big ones.

Almost Home

Recently I was trying to think where "Home" is for me. I've lived in some great places. Northside of Chicago, in an apartment I'm sure I could never afford now, way UpNort where no one bothers to consider "wind chill," Milwaukee ya betcha, in a cabin on a ridge in Appalachia, a farmette in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, and now in SC. I grew up in Mayberry Carthage, Illinois and raised my kids in the belly button of Illinois. I just couldn't quite put my finger on where Home is.
I loved the never ending excitement and collection of cultures of Chicago. The food and music of Milwaukee were great. I love thinking of our first crooked apartment while at University. Ha! Plaid flannel curtains. Just thinking about the sunsets over the lake and the calm of canoeing the Eau Claire UpNort does something fluttery to my heart. Remembering my hometown - the safety, the neighborhood kids, climbing trees and riding horses - it's like a warm quilt on a winter night. Oh, and the way the fog filled the New River Valley and looked like snow from my cabin in Appalachia - took my breath away. Holding the new lambs in Virginia, collecting eggs from all my named hens, mmmmm. All of these places come with memories that touch my soul. But they don't fit with "Home." They fit with Almost Home

I know I felt a pull when in Southern Illinois a couple of days ago I could look straight ahead and see the sky over the tall corn. Sort of like there was a giant magnet out there and my solar plexus was made of very light iron. I just dunno exactly where "out there" is. 
I felt that same sort of pull in the southwest of England on one lane roads winding through meadows of bluebells. And I felt it sitting in the Bush in Australia conversing with kangaroos. I certainly feel it sitting on huge granite boulders around my sister's house. I even felt it in the markets in China a bit. It felt like I belonged - or more like I could belong.  
Maybe I'll find Home yet. Or maybe my home is this beautiful blue planet. I know that I grow more heart whenever I leave part of it behind. And maybe the composite of Almost Homes IS my home. And maybe I just think too much. Ya reckon?
I'm grateful.