hot compost…

It was a secret withheld for years of my life.
I’d read about it in gardening magazines, but I knew no one who had successfully heated anything up in their backyard. My dad dismantled the composter in his yard after the neighbours complained of the smell. I tried one out of chicken wire – the pile of leaves just dried up more and sat stubbornly in a pile… through the winter they waited and sat through another summer; unchanged and uncomposted. I tried one out of a green garbage can, with holes drilled into it. It sometimes worked, but was more muck and smell than anything the magazines described.
During our first fall in Saskatoon I watched with horror as the gigantic poplar tree in our backyard covered our lawn (and all of the neighbors’ yards) with millions of huge lily pad sized leaves. I bagged them. Those 9 bags of leaves sat under the poplar tree for the winter… in the spring they were still there. 9 bags of leaves unchanged and uncomposted.
The second fall I just took the lawn mower to the offerings from that huge poplar. Drove over and mowed all of the leaves, dumped them in a pile in the back corner together with whatever grass clippings decided to come along, and soaked the whole thing. (My boys couldn’t figure out why I was watering the pile of leaves and grass.)
A few days later the first Saskatchewan snow fell, and when I looked into the backyard everything was white except that crazy pile of leaves. I went out to look, put my hand out, and felt heat radiating from that thing.