green

It was getting past noon and I still hadn’t taken a shower. And, as everyone knows, the only way to justify going into the afternoon without a shower is to get really, really dirty.

We have a fenced in area out behind the garden shed where we dump leaves every year. We call it our compost pile, but we know that to make compost you have to turn it over, add a little dirt and let some air get into the works. We don’t do any of those things. Once a year we dump a whole bunch of leaves on top of last years’ leaves.

Well, it turns out that if you are patient you don’t have to do any of that other stuff. If you’re willing to wait about a decade the leaves will turn into dirt all on their own.

When we moved into our house (about a decade ago, go figure) we had a home inspector come and look things over and tell us what needed to be done. The previous owners fixed some things and we’ve done a few since then. One of the things he said we should do is add some dirt to the south side of the house so that water would drain away from the house more effectively.

Now I happen to be an expert on water (I’m over 70% water by volume) and I knew that our water was draining fine. But twice a year Lauren brings up the fact that we haven’t added any dirt to the south side of the house. Eventually it’s enough to get to a guy, so, as I needed an excuse not to have showered I put my new dirt on the south side of the house.

Oh, only the bottom of the pile was actually dirty, so I had to tunnel under.