I’ve been immersed in garden reading this month, especially material on organic food gardening and the related art of composting.
I was inspired to build a new compost bin out of recycled pallets and I’m redonkulously dorked-out excited about the results. Well, consider that this is the first thing I’ve built that wasn’t, say, Target furniture. It didn’t come with instructions and I figured out how to build it with free materials and 3 nails.
The shiny circle at the top of the bin is most likely an old metal belt from a long-gone wooden bucket. I like it because it reminds me of a new moon. It’s a little zen and a little redneck. Yay.
When I placed it on top of the new compost bin, I started thinking about cycles and how the new moon corresponds nicely with the idea of compost: with winter, sleep, death and decay. Here the simple symbol of the memory of fullness lapsed stands watch over decay slowly transforming into new life.
Yet it also looks a bit like a zero — a reminder of the zero point to which all things return and an instant reminder of how many miles our garden’s gifts travel from harvest to kitchen to dinner plate.
Starhawk, the activist pagan ecofeminist author, has said she considers compost a very nearly sacred thing. At this hour, I’m inclined to agree.
