Survival Boot Camp Class of 2006

RISE UP AND BE RECOGNIZED!
Have you incorporated some level of preparedness or sustainability into your world that might be of interest or inspiration to others? If so, send us a picture of yourself or your group and a paragraph or two about it. If we post your story in the gallery (and we probably will), we'll send you a copy of PREPAREDNESS NOW!  Join the PROCESS announcement list to keep up with PROCESS and PREPAREDNESS NOW! news and events.

July 4, 2006

Leaves of Grass – A Compost Love Story

I’m in love with my composter. I know, I know, this sounds a bit like the New Green Economy version of the classic Queen song, “I’m in Love with my Car.” But hey, why wouldn’t I be in a pastoral haze, when “The Earth Machine,” my beloved’s given name, is not only good to me, but to the environment as well? The big black bin--which to be honest isn’t really a looker with its Darth Vader mask-like aesthetic--graces a corner spot in my back yard in the Hollywood Hills, beneath a twenty foot high bougainvillea growth. Summer, when life is in full bloom, is its active season.

No longer will leaves, clippings, tea bags, coffee grinds, fruit and vegetable scraps sit rotting in a garbage heap in the Inland Empire. They will go into my black beauty and slowly decompose. And though nothing seems to be happening at the moment (at least not at broadband-worthy speed), it will. Patience, grasshopper, come Fall it will be harvesting season. Time to reap the rewards of the wait—time to use the rich brown soil that all of these ‘scraps’ have become to nourish my garden. It will go back into the dirt surrounding my bean stalks, avocado tree, orange tree, and fledgling spinach plants and they will thank me for it, with growth.

I know, right now I sound like I’m wearing a flowing white dress, a garland of flowers around my hair and an Al Gore in ‘08 button (or at the very least I could be cast in a Massengil commercial, were it 1978). But hey, once you go green you never go...black...or something to that effect. And it’s not just a matter of being on Big Al’s A-List or even that tiny task of saving the planet. It’s about survival. And when gas prices continue to go up forcing a hike in produce prices, when we have our Big One and no one’s around to pick up the pieces, a-la Katrina—in short, when the shit hits the fan, some of us will be using it as fertilizer.

Shana Ting Lipton
Freelance Writer
www.shanatinglipton.com
Hollywood Hills, CA

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