If you have ever doubted being part of an ecosystem, consider this. My feet are peeling. Not just a little flake here, a little flake there. Whole sheets of skin are sailing away. I've never seen anything like it. I know, but try to stay with me. It's like my poor feet haven't walked barefoot … Continue reading Field Note #3: The Molt
Category: writing
Tales from the Compost Pile: Fear Nibbles
(Story in progress/ starts at ‘Tales from the Compost Heap: Digging In’) I’m not sure exactly when Fear got in, but can confirm it breached my perimeter and settled at the farm some time ago. Just around the same time I found a mouse in my box of lasagna. Sometimes fear doesn’t announce its arrival with … Continue reading Tales from the Compost Pile: Fear Nibbles
Tales from the Compost Heap: Welcome to my Multiverse
I’ve heard the term Multiverse for a number of years, while wandering unaccompanied through inter-web borderlands and fringe bookstores. I had a resistance to the term, associating it with high-tech billionaires and microchipping humans or something equally unsettling. Mostly it sounded like a word reserved for tyrants planning to take over the world or radically … Continue reading Tales from the Compost Heap: Welcome to my Multiverse
Tales from the Compost Heap: Resurrection
If you are arriving mid-story, please start at “Turning the Compost” and then jump right in. _______ After meeting Bea on sidewalk that summer day in Toronto, we learned we’d been living just six blocks from each other for quite some time. She invited me to her apartment which was just a short walk from … Continue reading Tales from the Compost Heap: Resurrection
Tales from the Compost Heap: The Little View Master
I honestly had no idea I was about to dig up Auntie Bea. Or my mother. My shovel was aiming for farm stories, and they were no more than five years deep! Apparently, I hit some sort of worm hole and was transported, as it were, to 1985. I didn’t know my everyday garden-variety worms had … Continue reading Tales from the Compost Heap: The Little View Master
Tales from the Compost Heap: Sorting Deaths
Compost is funny because it will take almost anything living, and in time, break it down and return it to the earth. No ceremony. No eulogies. It just happens beside barns, and in barrels beside rose gardens without anyone making a fuss. Few can tell you the why or how of it, although books and … Continue reading Tales from the Compost Heap: Sorting Deaths
Tales from the Compost Heap : Eating the Biggest Frog (Part 2/2)
So, I thought the world was ending. We need to get this out of the way, straight off. My Auntie Bea swore by “Eat the Big Frog First” and I’ve been following her sage advice for over 50 years. The teaching, as I understand it, is this: If I have ten things to do, and … Continue reading Tales from the Compost Heap : Eating the Biggest Frog (Part 2/2)






