Young Compost

Last spring and summer, i used all my compost--5 bins of it. Fortunately fall clean-up provided an excellent opportunity to fill up the bins, and i topped off each one with a thick layer of manure from a nearby farm.

This spring, i have young compost--all gangly with stems and undecomposed flotsam. So i'm screening my compost by using a flat (tray) and shaking it over the wheelbarrow. I particularly like a flat that has solid sides and holes that are not too big. Shake, shake, shake. Then i throw the over-sized debris into the newest compost bin. The screened compost, which i used for potting up extra plants, is really beautiful.

Wisdom is our understood experience. Sometimes it takes us years or even decades to understand our experience--of grief, of trauma, of plain-vanilla suffering or stress.

When i was young, i thought morality was old-fashioned. I thought i could get away with all sorts of little cheats, white lies, and a little sexual misconduct here and there. I didn't realize i was just hurting myself. I did not understand my own experience. Not really.

Eventually the compost pile of my life built up. All that stress has decomposed and become the ground in which kindness and compassion now grow.

Nowadays i sift my thoughts and words and deeds through the screen of "Is this beneficial?"
Nowadays, i grow happiness.