compost

we built some garden boxes, filled them with dirt, stirred in the compost, put in the seedlings, and got closer closer closer to a vegetable garden where there was once an overgrown decorative flower border.

and for a few minutes today, i quietly stared into my compost box. look at that rich soil. look how that food and that straw mix and stew and sink down to the bottom of the box on the left, turning into nutritious thick black soil. as i stared into my compost box, i thought about how circular life is.

i thought about how discarded food becomes dirt, and how the dirt fuels the growth of new food. how today, as i shovel compost, so many other people in the world are shoveling compost and making gardens and planning food growth. i thought about how our children will help us harvest the vegetables from the garden, will learn to preserve it, to cook with it, and how these skills circle and cycle through life, generation by generation.

compost. it's the best.