This is turning out to be one of the weirder natural things I’ve observed in my life, and that’s saying something.
In fact, it’s almost as bizarre as the infamous “mouse rattle.” That one involved the dessicated corpse of a mouse with tiny little bones rattling inside a stiff, leathery skin. I have photos but have fallen on oddly empathic ground and choose to spare you. This story is much nicer.
In between the two houses in this compound lies an ancient compost bin about two feet on a side. Constructed of old lumber and chicken wire, it’s sat there since long before the five years I’ve been here. For all I know, it’s an actual Old Taos Hippie device from the dawn of time. We never put anything into it, mainly because it’s always full — I call it the “skunk feeder” — but our vegetarian neighbors faithfully carry kitchen scraps and dead plants out there and told me I could have it all. To my knowledge, nobody has actually ever used any of this compost, although I could be wrong. It isn’t actually compost (or so I thought), more like a dead flower and egg shell museum, due to the dry climate. Nobody adds water to it, either, which makes the rest of this tale even more unusual.
Aside from the stems, eggshells, old onions, and such, which may be older than some of you, the outer walls of the rectangular bin appeared to be made of solid clay. [You can see a bit of this at the bottom of the above photo.] Adobe, I wondered? The hard material extended from just below the outer surface to about halfway to the middle. Was there some sort of inner structure to this cage, a stupendous undiscovered Taos compost trick? Where but here would anyone plaster compost with adobe, right?
But then it dawned on me: that wasn’t clay or hardened adobe mud. It was really hardened compost, organic nutrients wet only by the elements over the millennia and compressed over time to form a thick layer of compost concrete! The stuff did break up easily enough when I pounded it, but how weird is this in the first place? — and think of the history! How many hippie chicks, bikers, old gay guys, drug addicts, and retired schoolteachers had dumped asparagus stems, dead mice, and gum wrappers into the chicken wire maw, never realizing that someday it would all be useful dirt? I mean, is this a great planet or what?
The Original Compost, building block of the universe. Ur-compost, chilluns, destined for my tomato patch.
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Yea! compost! Great stuff! But my comment is really about the picture on today’s Fotofeed. Why do I have a mental image of you in your scivvys squatting in the water to get the shot? See what happens when you share too many details!?! LOL
No, no, that’s taken from a bridge!