Crazy Stable

How's this for "back to the land"--last weekend,  the Family was conscripted to drag the  Christmas tree to Greenwood Cemetery to be chipped into mulch, and to dig out and bag our take-home bonus of compost.  The poor tree had plenty of life left in it, since we bought it ultra-fresh at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket; I was reminded of the guy in Monty Python and the Holy Grail who, when the fellow comes around crying, "Bring Out Your Dead!" protests, "But I'm not dead yet!" Disposing of the tree has always been fraught for me; my mother recounted that the only lie she ever told me in my childhood was that curbside Christmas trees were carted  off and happily replanted, after my sobbing toddler self tried to drag one home and "rescue" it from the garbage men. 

At least this is a noble end for the tree, and on ground both historic and hallowed, yet! I was delighted to learn that one can tool around to Greenwood any time of year for more compost. Since I am hatching plans to bring a swath of cracked cement under cultivation this year, I can use all the compost I can get (in addition to what I, or rather the industrious CrazyStable worms, can make from our food scraps and garden waste).  The irony of composting in a famous cemetery was not lost on us, of course; but it was only in examining the picture above that I noted the name of the monstrous chipper is "Vermeer," a curious choice for a loud machine that digests trees.

While we're doing irony, my resolve on this very recent 50-degree day was to pile the mulch protectively around all the rosebushes before our long-delayed first cold snap.  Hahahahaha...20 degrees out there, and the mulch is frozen in its bags.  The bird feeders are also empty. My performance as a good countrywoman of Flatbush is inversely proportional to the outside temperature...