The weather, Radio 4 keeps reminding me, is unseasonably warm. It ought to be six or seven degrees colder than this, in England in late September. Maybe eight or nine. 'Ought' is one of my least favourite words. 'You really ought' to do X is a piece of advice designed to make one want to do the opposite of X, and maybe bite the adviser for good measure. I am delighted with the weather doing what it ought not, which I don't suppose will last more than a few days, and am happily pressing on with the weeding and revelling in the sensation of warm sun on my back. It will be cold soon enough and stay that way for ages, you'll see.
I have broached the end bin of finished compost, picking out the twiggy bits that haven't rotted down yet. I think I recognise the stems of santolina, though it's difficult to tell by this stage, and the bunches of straight stems could be asters. I chucked them into a bucket as I filled the wheelbarrow and emptied them back into the first bin to go round again. The rest of the compost looks like the real thing, dark, crumbly, and pleasant smelling. I've found the odd worm, just to underline how alive it is. Home made compost as a soil conditioner counts as high horticulture, closing the loop and making the garden a self-contained system, if only there was enough of it. There never is. It's amazing how the contents of the first bin, heaped high with stems, leaves, spent flower heads, chicken house litter, and the contents of the kitchen peelings bin, then refilled again as it slumps until there must have been fully eight feet of stuff piled on to it, rots down to no more than a foot of nice, friable top dressing for the borders, by the time it's been forked along the row from bin to bin.
The contents of the next bin in is looking quite hopeful as well, though it may be that when I come to dig into it I'll find too many lumps and solid stems. I thought the heap I'm using now might have been ready a few months ago, but when I investigated there were still far too many not yet rotted twigs. I should probably be more diligent about chopping stems into shorter lengths when I'm clearing the borders, to encourage them to rot quickly on the heap, or shred them. The trouble is, it all takes time, and is more work with the secateurs. Even with the Felcos it can feel as though I'm flirting with the risk of RSI during weeks when I'm clearing the borders.
I turned everything from the first bin into the second one some weeks back, because it needed mixing and aerating, and I needed the space at the start of the process. Then I found pods of grass snake eggs, not yet hatched, which I put back in the compost. They should have hatched and dispersed by now. A few years ago I was turning the heaps during summer and came upon a mass of wriggling babies only a few inches long. I suppose that's an argument for not messing with your compost in July while it's doubling up as a wildlife habitat. The beekeepers get calls every year about bumble bee nests in compost bins, but I've never had one.
By now the first bin is piled high. Shreddings from the eleagnus hedge make up rather a large proportion of the mix, and I could do with finding some softer material to mix in with it when I turn it. Meanwhile, the Systems Administrator has started burning the old, dried leaves swept up from under the hedge. I'm reluctant to add those to the heap, quite apart from the fact that the compost pile is already eleagnus heavy, because they must be mixed up with all sorts of weed and grass seeds after sitting on the ground under the hedge for so long. The incinerator is doing a good job of keeping a controlled and not too smoky fire going, and we must have got through half a dozen bags of leaves in the past couple of days. That still leaves a lot of bags to go, not to mention the great heap of long grass.
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