Compost

It's spring in the UK and gardeners' thoughts are turning towards planting and growing new things. To get the best results the ground has to be prepared and one of the easiest ways of getting good fertile soil is to add compost.

 

Producing your own compost is a rather magical process. All you need is space, enough room for the traditional pile at the bottom of the garden, a trench, a wooden frame or even the tidy plastic obelisk with a lid and hatch. Then you start filling up your space. Toss in grass cuttings, dead leaves, egg shells, vegetable peelings, tea leaves, coffee grounds, the results of cleaning out your rabbit hutch or chicken coop - a whole assortment of seemingly random, disconnected organic matter. There are a few things that shouldn't be added - meat, perennial or persistent weeds (unless you want to give them a helping hand in colonising your garden) but on the whole, if it can rot down it can be included.

 

You could just leave your heap but that can run the risk of an anaerobic (horribly stinky, sludgy) reaction, as I achieved the first time I tried using dogfood sacks for my compost. This process needs oxygen. It can be helped along by occasionally turning the pile with a garden fork or by introducing earthworms to do the work for you, but without oxygen there won't be a happy outcome.

 

Once your heap/bin is full you have to wait.

 

There's nothing to stop you starting another compost heap in the meantime - waiting doesn't mean stagnating - but time is as important as oxygen to the process. It might take a couple of months, it might take a year or more, but waiting is inescapable.

 

Eventually the day arrives when you tentatively look into the compost bin. You stick in your spade and instead of a mess of assorted, unrelated, smelly, waste bits, you discover beautiful, fertile, sweet smelling (in an earthy way) composted soil which will give a boost to any of the fruit, vegetables, flowers you're hoping to grow. It truly is amazing. 

I often think the processes going on in my mind are a bit like what happens in a compost heap. 

 

We're constantly absorbing all sorts of things from what we see, hear, read, experience. Sometimes we feed ourselves deliberately, we choose what to read, watch, listen to. Sometimes images, attitudes, experiences are thrust upon us unwillingly. They all go into our internal "composting process" and contribute to what emerges in our lives, beneficial or otherwise.

 

You need to watch out for the "perennial weeds", those habits (or sins) which will corrupt your compost and spoil your garden. By all means, take in many and varied things but be aware: guard your mind and don't allow the harmful to take root. If you're concerned that they have, remember, the composting process does a good job of destroying pathogens.

 

It can be an amazing process when you allow the oxygen of the Holy Spirit to work through all the bits and pieces until everything is transformed, even the tough, unsavoury things which it's hard to believe could ever result in anything good. 

 

Beautiful things can grow from the hotchpotch of your life when you allow the Holy Spirit work in.