The Raccoon Informs Me That It's Time to Write About Compost (with Curses!)

Each morning this week I've come out to find the compost bin open and unidentified compost missing. The raccoons, with their nimble fingers, can slide back the admittedly easy catch on the lid and then flip it off. (In fact, writing this at 9:45pm, I think I hear someone knocking around out there right now. Fucker.) Of course, the sliding catch is intended more as a defense against a strong breeze or random chance, as opposed to a determined omnivore who smells the delicious aroma of coffee grounds atop macaroni and cheese.

But that's not what I'm here to talk about; let's just leave the raccoons to their mischief, shall we? They're welcome to their little bit of rotting vegetation, if that's what it takes to keep them from breaking into the car and stealing the current book on CD. The little scamps. No, I'm here to talk about the joy of composting. Did I say joy? I meant joys.

The main thing is that between recycling (plastic, paper, glass, metal), the cloth diapers, the cloth dinner napkins, and the composted food scraps, we have to SEARCH THE HOUSE to find things to throw in the regular garbage. Actually, that's not true: food packaging, paper towels/tissues, and cat shit will do nicely, thanks. But that's really about it. And as primary garbage-taker-outer, I have to say that it's an improvement over the old forklift and manual labor process. The sanitation guys seem to be happier, too -- they've stopped pelting our car with leftovers, anyway.

Second, though, all that rich foody goodness, plus some leaves and grass clippings, decays into the most incredibly rich, dark, trufflacious stuff, bursting with nutriments for the plants. This year I planted a single tomato plant in a patch of soil dug in with last summer's compost. Okay, yeah, every tomato had blossom-end rot (we ate some anyway), but we got four crossbred pumpkin-zucchini that grew out of the compost. And that's fuckin' spooky.













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I Guess I Planted

Saturday morning we leapt from bed, jammed everyone into their fleecy clothes, gobbled down a quick cup of coffee and some oatmeal on our way out the door wandered around the house for a while like a herd of sleep-deprived goats, looking for shoes and rejecting all breakfast ideas, before finally getting into the car and driving to a tree-planting organized by the Hudson River Estuary Program's Trees for Tribs initiative. The idea is to create erosion and runoff buffers around Hudson tributaries by planting trees, and to then eat pizza.

We got out of the car and shoved the stroller (the town stroller, not the woodland stroller, whoops) through waist-high grass down toward the bank of the Moodna Creek, ignoring the plaintive bleats of our son, who hated his coat, and his shoes, and his too-large work gloves, and us, and who was cold. It was simple enough to follow the rows of plastic tubing that had been erected to protect the newly-planted saplings from browsing deer, until we found the other hippies concerned citizens who had decided this was important enough to do on a Saturday morning.

Although we had been alerted to the event by an email from a friend in another town who couldn't actually make it to plant trees, we found ourselves in the midst of a who's-who: the woman we bought our house from, a friend we made through other friends, one of our babysitters, the water authority consultant I'd already talked to about our cellar...it seemed as though we'd found the right crowd.

The work was very light (somehow the holes had dug themselves) and our companions had done much of it already. Almost before the lad had asked if we were ready to leave, we were ready to leave. Just then, atop the mighty iron Moodna Viaduct, something like 200 feet overhead, a Secaucus-bound New Jersey Transit train hove into view. That did it for the boy, and the look on his face did it for us.

While we had worked, shoving dirt in around the root balls of the thin sticks and staking up tubes of corrugated plastic to protect them from nibbling teeth, I had tried to impress the boy with the seriousness of what we were doing, tried to get him to picture a time twenty years hence when a proud stand of oaks and maples that he had helped plant would keep the creek within its banks and help the adjacent fields retain their topsoil, while providing habitat for animals and shade for hikers— and what he'll remember is the train.

Which is also fine by me.


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Orange You Glad We Didn't Give out Bananas?

We don't get down to New York City that often—at least not to Manhattan—but the marathon is powerful enough to draw us out of the mountains in our flannel, beards, and suspenders to stand on Fifth Avenue and croak obscenities from baccy-stained mouths at the sneaker-clad city slickers in their polyester gym shorts. Our toddler is especially good at this.



Sunday we went, and a very generous woman who lets me sleep at the house spent some time slicing oranges in the kitchen before we left. I haven't watched the race since 2004, and I didn't hand out fruit then, but I received a slice of orange while running it in 2005. That's when I discovered that oranges are hand-made by Santa Claus, and he uses magical go-juice to make them.

I don't know if you fish, but that physical feeling when a fish mouths your bait? And the more decisive tug when it takes the lure? That's what it felt like when runners dipped into the gallon-sized ziploc I was holding, extremely grateful, looking me in the eye, calling me nice things ("lifesaver," "godsend"...I would have given my wife the credit, but she was three or four feet away, and I like being called nice things), asking if they could take one "for a friend."

The three pounds or so that I held outstretched went as quickly as my wife had said it would, and even the last forlorn little orange section, awash in a pool of juice, got snatched up by a Swedish lady whom you could tell felt a little thrill of victory at getting the last orange.

Ordinarily I would sum up by digging out a metaphor and broadening the orange story and the running and the time my wife spent slicing them into something to walk away with and chew over. But not today. Today I would like to simply report that it was really fun to give out oranges to runners during the New York City marathon.



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The Raisin Joke

The lad was in the bath the other day. His mother came in and checked his fingertips.

"You're going to turn into a raisin," she told him.

"Dad!" he called. "You better get me out of here or you're going to have to cover me with yogurt!"


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The Vermin Who Came in from the Cold

The high today is supposed to be forty-eight. And you know what that means. Out in the woods about a mile away, a raccoon will wake up this evening in its hollow log, shivering, and thinking about how the hell it's going to chew through another withered, jerky-like corncob, with the skeletons of the stalks all around mocking it for living such a crappy life.

Or! this raccoon might think, Or, I can go to town! And as it weighs the pros and cons, reluctant to leave the relative warmth of its loamy bedroom, the idea will become more and more appealing. The fears--angry dogs, cars, bright flashlights and the shouts of bathrobe-clad homeowners--will fade away as the raccoon convinces itself. Instead, visions of driveways covered with flimsy, thin plastic kitchen garbage bags, so tender, so vulnerable, will begin to form in its head. And just visible through the pale plastic, Good Things to Eat. Parts of bagels. Crinkly little packages with plenty of leftover food. Whole rinds of tasty melons. Fish parts!

Stomach growling, the raccoon will gather its keys and cellphone and head down the hill toward the lights, muttering to itself despite its excitement I've got to get this place set up for winter or I'm gonna freeze. Passing bushes whose berries have long been gathered, walking over the rocks where salamanders hid in warmer days, the raccoon will wonder if Earl's likely to be out tonight, or whether those skunks from the park will show. They're always good for a laugh, as long as they don't get too excited, the raccoon will think.

And about a hundred yards outside of town, the merest whiff of garbage and compost on the air, the raccoon will come around a curve in the game trail to find a couple of woodchucks, the possum twins from the Big Oak Tree, his cousin Earl and his girlfriend Arlene, and a whole tribe of skunks jamming the path, milling around and muttering. A coyote will slink back through the crowd toward the woods, snarling "This is freaking ridiculous, I come here all the time."

And standing up on its hind legs, craning its neck, the raccoon will see a bear and a velvet rope blocking the trail. The bear will explain reasonably and implacably to a couple of demanding, agitated weasels--"But if you'd just check the list!" "There is no list. I am the list."--that it doesn't make the rules and that if they would just join everyone else on the line, that would be best.

And of course the bear will step aside for two does who bat their long lashes and will unclip the rope with a little smile as their scent wafts over him, then turn back to the assembled masses and shake its head and shrug at their sarcastic jeers.

The raccoon will sidle up next to Earl and Arlene and roll its eyes. "Man," it'll say, "this place has really gone to hell." They'll all nod their heads. But they'll be patient. Because it's chilly, and there's garbage in there.

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Stepping Up?

We'll be down at the Moodna Viaduct tomorrow, planting trees and shrubs for the watershed. Because trees remove carbon from the air and add cool, refreshing oxygen, this will also overlap nicely with Step It Up Day.

Hope y'all step up too.

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What You're Gonna Need

You've been renting for eight or nine years and you want to move out of the city and get a house. You can do this, because you can get your landlord to buy out your lease, because even though the rest of the country is hurting, home prices in Disneyland New York are still strong. Your shopping list:

cars (2)
shovels (2)
ice melt (50#)
rakes (4.5)
lawnmower, ride-on (1)
paint (6 gal.)
cat's paw (for prying up nails, carpet, etc.)
lock de-icer
garden hose
sprinkler
cinder blocks
duct tape
bike
kayak
dog
more furniture
hangers (2 dz)
televisions (2)
Duraflame™ logs (4)
needlepoint: "bless this house" (1)
kids (2.5)
seeds
twine
welcome mat

I'll try to keep this list up to date. Feel free to add your own findings in comments.

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