Two Stories

 Story Number One

This spring I built a rotating compost bin on top of a 2x4 frame. I used an old water barrel that I had sitting around for about 10 years, back when I was thinking I’d build a rain barrel. Well, that never happened, but I did finally get around to putting it to good use as a compost bin.

After a month or two of collecting kitchen waste, the compost was way too wet. It’s not really “compost” as defined by Organic Gardening, it’s more like a place to dump kitchen scraps. It’s up off the ground and in the barrel so as to keep out the critters. We do put egg shells, lemon rinds and other material in there that we probably shouldn’t but, you know, it’s not like we’re making Grade A compost to sell to Hammacher Schlemmer or anything, so…   

So I added some grass and leaves I had handy, but from then on I started to dump the grass clippings next to the barrel so that I could easily add them as needed. Well, a number of weeks ago, I noticed that the “compost” was again too wet, so I reached down to grab some grass clippings. But I didn’t just grab a handful, I sort of, scraped the driest ones off the top of the pile. And when I did I uncovered an egg. A complete, unbroken, seemingly still “heavy” egg. This is not something that we would have ever put into the compost. So where it came from, how it got there…a total mystery. Not quite weird scary, but getting close.

Story Number Two

Back in the Springtime, in a fit of homeownership, I bought a couple of mixed flower assortments to put into the hanging baskets that had been sitting empty on the floor of the front porch for…for a long time. I put the flowers in, hung them up and they looked great. For a while. One of them struggled before I just took it down. The other one may have lasted until we went on vacation in August, but, knowing that it was going to die without water, I pre-emptively took it down and left it on the edge of the porch with the other one.

Finally, getting around to doing some fall cleanup, I cleaned out the last of the tomato plants from the garden and did a little tidying up. After I was done, I remembered the baskets still on the front porch so I grabbed them and took them to the vegetable patch and dumped them there. There was good dirt in the bottom and I wanted to save the coconut matting in the bottom of the wire hanging planter so this was good. 

I dumped the first planter and most of the dirt was so dried together that it just retained its shape. When I dumped the second one, it fractured into only a few pieces but there, buried in the dirt, was a whole white egg. I picked it up to inspect it and it was whole and complete. It felt light, like there was nothing in it, but who knows how long it had been there. 

I have no more to tell you. No theories, nothing. This just happened, that’s all.