It seemed so simple, and it started so delightfully. Determined to compost all those carrot parings and poetic eggshells, I placed a pail on the kitchen counter and felt virtuous every time I made soup or a salad. But the pail filled, and I still lacked a plan. Dig a compost pit and stand inside it shoveling things about every so often? Too undignified. Transfer the compost from one receptacle to another as it cooks? Too sweaty. Maybe I could dig three separate areas side by side, and when the first one filled, move on to the next, leaving the first to cook? Brilliant. Until I remembered the raccoons would think so too.
I did not want one of those molded plastic bins--they were ugly, industrial, expensive--although the notion of drawers at the bottom did intrigue me. It seemed so wonderfully sneaky, pouring the raw stuff in the top and pulling the manure from the bottom. A tumbler would be fun to crank, but I couldn't find one that followed William Morris' exhortation to have things that are both useful and beautiful (and my grandmother's exhortation to not spend a fortune trying to be virtuous).
The more I read, the trickier it got. I needed earthworms, bloodmeal, activators. Just enough water, just enough sun (so likely in this part of the country). Aeration, loose layers, shredding and blending. This was like cooking.
Eventually--and yes, my counter-top pailful was rotting as I researched--I began to wonder if beauty, ease, magic and accessibility were perhaps too much to ask of my garbage.
Then I decided that if iceberg cores and broccoli stalks could be transformed into a rich black gold that would feed a hungry rose or guarantee heirloom tomatoes, it wasn't my demands but the manufacturers' imaginations that were at fault.
Until they grow more fertile--or readers send me ideas--I'll fasten one of those polka-dotted strips into a cylinder and wait.
--Jeannette Cooperman, staff writer
