Compost pile

I ticked Mom off yesterday. Yeah, I was a bad boy. I tore down the compost pile and moved it. We had talked about it for a while now. I’ve warned her that I was going to do it. So, she knew it was coming. Still, confronted with it, it shocked her.

See, this was something that she created once she was able to. Dad would never have put up with it. I can just imagine what he would have said if he really knew. Dad was a hard-line leaf burner from way back and he would have torched them all the first year. But once dad got sick and wasn’t able to do those type of things anymore she took advantage. She created all types of stuff in and around the house. He never knew what hit him.

One of those was the compost pile. Now, the idea behind it is grand. Use organic material, let it break down on its own and it will create the best growing medium for your plants and flowerbeds. Have to give it to her that she did “somewhat” take care of it. But they are low maintenance and doesn’t take much to watch over. The problem is where she had put it. Now, to create the compost the fastest is to have it in a airy, sunny area (stir frequently). But to keep it more out of sight (more specifically Dad’s sight) she put it behind the garage under a big maple tree. Probably the most moist and dark area in both yards. It was a mosquito haven. With the West Nile scare, it had to go.

So, I tore out a bunch of the lilac bushes (another near heart attack) and cordoned off a spot of the yard on the west side of the garage. It should have direct sunshine from about 11:00 to about 4:00 everyday. Plus it will be more open on three sides now. That added to the fact that we cut the tree down last year has opened the back yard more anyway.

So, I took the potato fork and dug into it. If it went through the tings of the fork then it was dirt, if it didn’t, it wasn’t. Took the “dirt” and spread it around the yard and took the “not dirt” and put it in the new compost pile. Cleaned up the whole area and then moved the swing back in that corner. I even had some sandstone and created a little stone pad to put the swing on. Plant some flowers or herbs around the area and VOILA, a nice sitting area. Now, if I can keep the area opened up, Mosquito haven has been destroyed.

But, while I was doing all that, my mind kinda wandered off and I thought about how she looked when she first walked out and saw me digging into the compost pile. I’m reminded that she is getting more and more like her mother (my grandmother) every day.

My grandmother was a unique person. She was 101 when she passed away a few years ago. When told about President Kennedy’s assassination, the only comment she made was that it wasn’t a nice thing to do. Her comment when man walked on the moon “That’s nice.” I really don’t think she comprehended either one of those major events. Her point of view: If it didn’t affected her life, her immediate life, then it really didn’t matter. The price of milk, loaf of bread, or the hot dogs bothered her. Getting out in the yard and tending her garden and flowers, cooking and washing bothered her. But what happened away from her 60 by 80 life didn’t really matter. Oh, we can debate the merits of it but the key thing is that she lived WITHOUT worrying about them. There was little to nothing she could or would do about it anyway, so why worry about it at all. It didn’t effect her, it didn’t matter, and she lived to 101 with a stress level that was virtually nothing.

I’m reminded of this fact daily. The self-brought on stress that I accumulate is brought on simply because I worry about things way too much. Some, granted, I can do something about, but there are things that I simply can not change. I would much rather worry about the price of milk, loaf of bread or cooking and washing than to worry about when that meteorite is going to strike the earth, the Illuminate, or any of the other myriad of conspiracy theories that are out there.

You can steal candy from a baby, but is the outrage worth it?