Walking to the composter

I wonder if my readers (both of you) ever get tired of reading my minutia. A cardinal, the sun—it’s making a comeback!—all are about nothing. Pretty much the stuff of real life—when we decide to get off social media.

I know, I know. It’s tough these days.

But let me tell you about walking to the composter. When we got the spaceship-looking contraption we pondered where to place it. We determined the farthest corner of the back yard was best, so that if it smelled (all that rotting compost) it wouldn’t offend.

So now I have to tromp across unbroken snow, the tops of my boots barely sticking out, in the freezing cold to the composter with my little buckets. It seemed reasonable that if one of us was going to dump, then I should take both my daughter’s and my compost. I compost to save the planet and hopefully make some nutrient-rich soil come spring for the garden—ahh! the garden).

Once I reach the composter then I have to chisel away the snow and ice locking the lid down and yank and pull to get it off. The compost usually generates energy when breaking down and this energy is heat. Except-----this winter when it has become a frozen block of twisty-brown compost. They say, all the folks on the compost Reddit to be sure and out in some organic material such as mulching leaves when contributing to the compost pile. All the mulching leaves got buried under snow—so, no, I haven’t done that recently. I try to break up the frozen clod with my stir rake, but nothing is moving.

By now I am freezing and quickly move to find the lid and screw it back on. The gross buckets with muck slime on the bottom are gathered and, once again, I trek back over the snow to the back decks. A gross job made harder by the cold and snow. It isn’t exactly Little House on the Prairie or a rendition of The Long Winter, but hopefully with the slow return of moderate temps we might be able to regain mastery of the composter.

see it back there, the black dot