Compost

It’s a sunny winter’s day in my garden and I’m busy digging compost for my raised vegetable beds. I’m doing a job that gives me great pleasure. I’m outdoors, the weather is kind enough, the air is fresh and the sun is bright. My fork goes easily into the ground to loosen the earth and my woman-sized spade lifts the dark friable soil easily. I chuck it onto the wire mesh resting over my wheelbarrow and scrape away until it all falls through leaving only bones and the occasional bits of plastic trapped by the mesh. There are many more bones than plastic. Interesting, I think. Gardening is physical philosophy and I’m an amateur – a lover that is – of philosophy and ecology but also a debutante who is always learning. I wonder if the production of bones isn’t the actual purpose of human life. They are the end product of human life after all and they do last thousands of years.