One week ago a semi arrived at The Bungalow with eight steamy yards of black gold. I had ordered this delivery and scheduled it for Wednesday. What I had not anticipated was the size of the delivery truck, which did not fit down my leaf lined drive, or in fact my neighbor's. So, instead of having an extra large pile of evolving cr@p deposited in a discrete and manageable space near my raised beds and rain barrels in the back yard by the barn, it has sat for the last week in my front yard.
Don't get me wrong.
I. love. compost.
{In a huge pile in my front yard, not so much!}
We have spent the last week shoveling and loading the nutrient rich organic matter around every plant and shrub on the property. We have filled our raised beds with it and all of my planters. We have worked in along the roots of the peonies and the rhubarb and the lilacs. When I put in twelve new hosta lilies along the now tamed hedge I back filled with compost. (When my friend Sarah visited last summer, she said, "That's a hedge?!?" about the monstrous, leafy 15 foot high expanse that separates our property from our neighbors to the North. It's now a more manageable six feet tall. The width of the expanse that we cut back allowed us to use the space to create a six foot wide mulched bed.)
We have offered compost to all of our gardening neighbors. We sent it in trash cans for my MIL's rhubarb. If you live in drive-able proximity, please come help yourself! We have whittled the pile down to about a third. Which means we still have the equivalent of two pick-up beds of compost available.
Compost is magic. It feeds plants, keeps down weeds and is living. It's warm to the touch. (This kind of freaked my kids out.)
* Side note: my oldest promptly volunteered for all dishwasher and laundry duty to avoid any contact with something that is warm and steamy!
When we bought The Bungalow a dozen years ago we were thrilled to stumble upon the garden files of Phyllis, the thoughtful perennial gardener who lived in The Bungalow with her husband in the 1970s and 80s. The owners between Phyllis and The Johnson's had let everything become overgrown, but with the help of Phyllis' garden maps, sketched on yellow legal pads, we were able to decipher what plants where popping up around the yard. We transplanted the rhubarb and asparagus, that was overgrown with trumpet vine to a sunny spot in the back yard. We moved peonies, that after thirty years of tree growth where then in the shade, to a sunny row in the back. With all of these transplants we used compost. For good measure we tamped it around other beds as well, and threw it down with grass seed on bare spots in the lawn. It was miraculous.
After our five years in China, The Bungalow was looking pretty overgrown again. But with the sweat equity of four of the five Johnson's, and with the help of compost, we are hoping to bring it back to the glory it once knew in Phyllis' care.
Thank you compost.
