There’s something strangely humbling about sifting compost. Maybe it’s the whole ‘man thou art dust’ thing on the one hand or maybe it’s also that compost is a world in and of itself; an environment lending life to an entire ecosystem of which our gardens are only a small end-result part of. I mean, do you think that an earthworm gives a damn about our tomatoes or our nutrition; I don’t. He’s just
doing what he does naturally.
Compost lets you know there’s a lot more out there than you. So there I was sifting and feeling happy yet woefully inadequate and human. It doesn’t help that when you sift, you get an up close look at the life that teems within it. Frankly for some, getting an up close look at the life that exists within their compost may not be the most enjoyable part of the gig because life does teem. There’s an assortment of critters running hither and tither; mostly wood lice (pill bugs), spiders and earthworms. These are beneficial; scary in their numbers-they still worry me in a dry peat pot-when you consider the roly-polys but beneficial nevertheless.
I walked between the raindrops and planted my onion sets, along with my Roma and Husky Cherry tomatoes. I cut back this year, thinking about that end-game; i.e. how I want to look, have to work, come September and October. Years past, I didn’t and my back hated me for it. Along with the tomatoes and onions, I planted a Black Beauty variety zucchini and an heirloom Green Tomatoes. Next will come chili peppers and cucumbers, both heat-lovers that will go in by the weekend, depending on my schedule. But the star of this Saturday was the compost and my newly arrived sieve. Sitting under my neighbors marauding plum tree, the back-and-forth rainfall didn’t bother me and I enjoyed the peacefulness while my trowel did its dirt scooping and scraping. Rain brings a hush to the raucous world that can surround an urban garden.
Every gardener should have some rain gear to appreciate working on those days that are less a downpour and more of a drizzle. All in all it was a peaceful return to a much awaited activity. We pine and chomp at the bit while waiting for the season to start as much as some of us cry and weep in the fall for the season to end. Both agony and ecstasy, no matter; we still do it. My neighbor, Mr. Willie said it best. A former sharecropper from Louisiana, we’d been talking while he was checking on a small bed of collard greens he’d set along the fence line between our yards.
They looked regimented where he’d thinned them out with their small yet broad green leaves bending to the soft rain. He’d started them from seeds gathered at end of season a few years back. I had even benefited from his sustainable bounty. After offering me some transplants, he went on as if in explanation of his actions, “I just can’t help it, you know. I’m a farmer; it’s in my blood”.
Source: A Peaceful Return - The Displaced Farmer