Garbage Day

July 30th

Fennel going to seed; tomatoes coming in gangbusters; daylillies fading; magnolia still flowering; lion's tail needs cutting back; grass still going crazy in all those areas I haven't been able to get to.

I'm not saying that every person who works in their garden ends up thinking about garbage, but surely the ones who compost do.

We have a little composter under our sink. Called the MaxAir, it's from Norway (wildly) and is outfitted with compostable "plastic" bags made of corn. When Wendy or I cut vegetables, as we are wont to do, we just throw the scraps into the little composter. On Saturdays, gardening day, I take the bucket out back and dump it in the big composter, bag and all.

In theory, what is supposed to happen is this is all supposed to happen smoothly. Like everything outside of a catalog, it doesn't.

For one, the MaxAir composter needs to be emptied twice a week. And it leaks, even though the ads say it doesn't. So we have to put it in a little Tupperware container. And it has to be outside in the summer. We get fruit flies in Southern California, and I'll be damned if they don't convince you of Spontaneous Generation. There are hundreds of them just a day after you put your first banana peel in there.

The rest, however, works pretty well. I take care of the composting, which I think is the part most people are grossed out by. I don't blame them. The composter is not the pretty one you see in the catalog, it's out in the corner of the back yard collecting spiderwebs over the week. Plus, mind you, it's full of rotting vegetables. OMG! "Rotting vegetables....? Grosssssss." Yes, you can hear the Vals screaming now. (I hadn't even started in on the worms that had moved in.)

Here's the weird thing: we ran out of the compostable bags (we have to order them online. Wait I have to. I just did. But it took me awhile) and in the meantime we've been throwing away scraps into the trash, just like we used to. But get this, we feel guilty about it now. Why? Because somewhere deep in the recesses of our minds, we became bonded to the idea of greencycling. Yes, we can buy organic vegetables (sometimes we do, sometimes we don't), but if we throw them out with the regular old garbage, they're going to be trapped under the miles of rubbish and compacted for the next millennia. " From Packaging Digest, an industry publication on packaging: "studies of landfills have revealed that on the whole, they tend to be tombs rather then composting reactors". I'm not saying the banana peel is as bad as the plastic bag, but still, if I'm here, and I've got space in my yard?

And do I rove the neighborhood endlessly spouting off about my "Black Gold", the compost of kings? No. I don't. Actually I rarely even use the compost out there in my bin. Why? I don't know why, exactly. Maybe because I've never been taught how to use it properly. But I really think that's a step that will come. For now I've got this little thing going. We buy the apple. We feed the apple to our kids. We toss the core and stem into the composter. Organisms that are already living out in my backyard break it down to usable compost for plants (or just a little ever growing pile of compost in my backyard).

I think about those people who lived here only 150 years ago, only a few generations ago, actually, and how they had to make things last forever. And how closely they had to live near their garbage. Our garbage is whisked away once a week and taken to a far off place. We don't see it. We don't smell it. And yet, it's there.

I'm not sure if it's a result of this, but we've started to look at all packaging and garbage in a different since starting this a few years ago. Most everything is broken down, even if it is a colossal pain. Toilet paper rolls go in the Paper Cycling. Plastics go in the Recycling Bin.

It's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. I am saying, though, that's it's right and it's good.

There's a Zen Buddhist saying, "Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water."

Some things, raising good (or relatively good) children, work, gardening, relationships, are not easy. That's what makes them incredibly valuable to us. The world should be of inherent value to all of us, but we've been fooled, lulled to sleep actually, about its value. As hard as it seems, it's going to take work to get back to a proper perspective.

And that's not a bad thing.

(Picture by nanaandbump)