Sigh. Another day, another twelve hours full of composting oppurtunities!!

As I shovel another handful of technicoloured jelly snakes into my mouth, I will tell you about my love affair with compost.

Well, it all began when my sister came to visit and gave me a copy of her favourite gardening magazine before she left. Inside was a very good article about the delights and benefits of starting your own wormery and what a beneficial harvest of worm wee and worm poo you could treat your garden with!

"Oh joy!" I thought, "What a nice change from the doo-doo harvest it usually gets from the dog and cat!" and visions of the landscape's bounty filled my mind and heart.

But, on investigation of commercially available worm farms, I discovered they were horrendously expensive! Over $100.00 in fact. Imagine! Just to buy 500 of the little critters (the garden variety will die in captivity) costs $20.00! I suppose I could do it myself with free styrofoam fruit and vege boxes, but I had lost momentum.

I investigated compost tumblers ($450.00 for the smallest). Finally I settled on a compost bin - twenty five bucks or so from Kmart. (But I have a special little tool to aerate it with! Woo hoo!)

Anyway, back to my love affair.

I just can't stop thinking about compost, because, at the end of the day, unless you dry and eat the worms (like some hippy people do, no doubt with lashings of tofu and alfalfa sprouts) then the worms are just the catalysts, part of the cause, not the effect! It's that rich, crumbly, dark, sweet smelling stuff I want. Sounds a bit like a Cadbury Flake Noir, but that would never make it out of my hand, let alone out of the house and onto the garden!

I have even been DREAMING about compost. I jest not! The other morning I woke up so happy and was nice to everyone for the whole day! THE WHOLE DAY!!

But is it becoming an addiction? I AM looking for every composting oppurtunity that I can. Mountains of tea bags - in the bin! Hills of vegetable peelings - in the bin! The contents of the vacuum bag - in the bin! (Though I don't know what kind of quality compost bits of lego and Barbie accessories make.)

There's more! Tumble-dryer lint! Hair brush hair! Dog brush hair! Crusts of bread! Dead flowers from the jam jar in the middle of the kitchen table! Dark, shrivelled stuff at the back of the fridge! Split, dripping, mouldy stuff from the front of the fridge! Oh, and on the weekend, Instant Jim even retrieved a highly malodorous rodent/marsupial/(??) that had died in the roof - it may still be in the garbage bin outside .. should I .. ....... it seems such a waste ..

~ .. " " ' ` # ^ .... / " ~ ~ ~

I'm starting to shake a bit now. I think my pupils are slightly dilated. I've got to get off this compost stuff.

Oh my love, my love. My lovely stinking pile of rotting refuse!

I don't want to become enslaved, addicted, CONSUMED! I don't want to become a Neat Freak by default. And, dear readers, I am I AM! Just see my shame as I hover over everyone at mealtimes (and in between!) waiting for them to finish, or nearly finish, and then WHISKING away the left overs just so I can go outside and see my darling with another love-offering; a Sonnet of Scraps!

Alas is me! Parting is such sweet sorrow!

Past cure I am, now Reason is past care,

And frantic-mad with evermore unrest;

My thoughts and my discourse as madmen's are,

At random from the truth vainly expressed;

For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright,

Who art as black as hell, as dark as night.

Sniff*

Shakespeare must have had a compost heap, too.