friend comes over for dinner last night ... he lives on one coast & i live on the other & we haven't seen each other in two years. he gets out of the car & immediately walks over to the compost bin & sticks his hand in. smiling, he said last time he came over, i made him stick his hand in the compost to see how hot it was & he just wanted to get it out of the way this time.

it's nice to have friends who understand. :0)

You tell all of your non-composting friends both in person and via e-mail all about your compost.--What's in it, how big it is, what you plan to add next, and how happy you are that it's hot. (They roll their eyes.) You then discreetly take banana peels and orange rinds left from faculty gatherings home at lunch to add to your compost pile. You practically yell at your visiting daughter, "Stop!! Don't throw those coffee grounds out. They go in the compost bucket." When you accidentally run over a lizard, you feel momentarily sad, and then you put it into the compost pile wondering how much nitrogen it will add. Finally, you look at your snails as sweet little compost additives.

1) I have my parents trained for when they visit.
2) I go around the yard in the spring looking for empty nests and get excited for all the bird poop left over after the babies have flown the coop.
3) also excited about dead animals...
4) spent money on a dedicated compost thermometer.
5) have drawn up plans on the computer CAD package for about a dozen different designs for compost bins.
6) i actually enjoy my time turning the compost (quality time with my friend)

...when, while you're shamelessly raking up every crumbled tree leaf windblown to the sheltered edge of a paved pathway a city block long in a local park, someone stops to casually chat with you and says "Composting...?"

...and they only escape ten minutes later by pleading an urgent appointment. Because you still haven't yet fully explained lasagna, greens and browns, Interbay Mulch, UCG collection from local restaurants, weed smothering with cardboard & newspaper, the soil food web & microherd, and the many, many, many beneficial results of increased OM in soil.

All the best,
-Patrick
(this actually happened to someone I know.)

When someone stops by and asks to see your garden, you take them to the compost piles first. And last.

Your boss calls you at home and tells you to drive your truck to work the next day so you can take home his lawn clippings/bagged leaves/dead (or so he thought, anyway) hanging basket and container plants. You know that he's only humoring you for the fresh basil...

The custodial service staff in your department are afraid to throw away a cardboard box even when it's your day off, because they know you have spies....

You separate your compostables by which bed/pile they go in to - "No, no - banana peels go in "that" lasagna bed; canteloupes need lots of potassium!"

You save all your chicken feed bags to put your compost in when you turn your piles in the spring.

when you have to 'ration' yourself as to how many times you can talk about compost to your friends, because you get scared they will refuse to listen one day.....

OMG! I can soooo relate! This is scary. You know you're a compost wacko when,

... you spend your rainy days listing 201 compost-able items, and then build a website around it :)

... you take more pride in your child's teacher asking for a copy of that 201 Compost Item list than your pride in being invited to talk about your expensive Esq. education & profession :)

All the Best, Tree

Here is a link that might be useful: 201 Compost ingredients

Your friends know they will be getting a composter from you for their wedding present.

You get really angry when you see a burning leaf pile.

You eat at a fast food place and tear the paper and cardboard into little pieces so you can compost them.

You have three shredders one in the kitchen for cereal boxes and the like, one in the dining room for junk mail and computer paper, and one in the bathroom for toilet paper rolls and misc. bathroom stuff.

You find a bag of leaves on the side of the road and think man what a lucky day.

You go shopping with the wife in a nearby town and think man if I could dump her off at the mall. I could drive around and look for leaves and grass clippings because the soil is different here and would add some different minerals to my pile.

You save all of your receipts from the day so you can shred them.

You go to a Granite countertop store to ask if they have a supply of granite dust to add to your pile.

Oh yea almost forgot one.

You get up at 3:30 in the morning so you can have control of your computer to look at, and post on the garden web so your wife doesnt know.

...when you have issues putting moldy bread in your compost.

:grins, ducks and runs like hell: ;-p

Seriously though, here's one - when you ask your hairsalon for their hair sweepings for the day, heh.

When your family gets the doctor and lawyer to declare you "non compost mentis" (from the Latin for "out of his composting mind.")

I find it reassuring to know there's an actual legal term for the condition.

Wayne

when...you spent from 10:00 to 3:00 on a Saturday working on a quilt service project you've been involved with since 1994 AND you make sure to bring home all the thread ends, teensy fabric scraps, etc., to put into your...yep...compost bin.

Cynthia

When your license plate on your car reads IALBTC

ialbtc

I was grocery shopping with hubby last Friday (the day before our anniversary.) I eyed the full bag of corn husks at the grocery store, but know we don't have room in the car for it (having previously taken the corn husks home from this store.) Hubby sees it too, and says something like, "the bag of corn husks is full, but I don't think we have room in the car." And you smooch him and say, "That's why I love you, we think alike."

Then on our anniversary itself, we got a call from the produce vendor at the weekend market near our home who wants us to come and pick up old produce. (Normally we only do that on Sundays, but it is a Saturday and they have a lot of stuff to get rid of.) You tell the guy you really don't want to come, and he says, "Oh, we can just put it in the dumpster" knowing that will make you come over. So on your anniversary you go and get a truck full of old drippy produce to give away and compost. (Made another trip today.)

Marcia

wow - good ideas on this thread! I thought i was bad lol!

...when you trawl the curbs, not for antique furniture or barnwood for clever crafting, but for last year's leaves, this week's grass clippings, tossed-out houseplants (& you grin when homeowners throw 'em out with that good soil still clinging to the roots or, better yet, when they toss the whole flower pot), & even cardboard boxes & used hamster bedding!

When you pull your kids away from the TV set / Computer, and drag them out down wind of the compost pile, where you heaped a couple yards of grass clippings yesterday, and exclaim: " Smell this!!! This is what not enough browns smells like!! - Needs shredded paper and stuff!! "

David, that is priceless!

You know you're a compost wacko when you get excited about finding a forum about COMPOST!!! I also really like mulch so I'll be spending some time here!

I had no idea this forum existed but am very happy to have found it.

...you tell the teachers at the school to save all the pencil shavings from the sharpeners.

...coworkers save their UCG, filters and food scraps and bring them to you every other day.

...hubby says the compost bin gets more attention than him.

...you bring the Rodale Book of Composting to your daughters choir concert to read before they start. (You would read it during the show, but the lights are off and hubby would kill you!!)

You know your a wacko when...

You compost a goldfish.

You know longer feel weird dragging out umpteen bags of UCG from Starbucks.

You see the Debbie Myers Green bag commercial on tv. And you cringe when you see them throwing ALL those vegetables in the trash.

The thread about the free compost in Boise, Idaho reminded me of this:

When I left a bang-up great Christmas party in Houston & headed home toward Dallas, & I saw bags & bags of autumn leaves & pine needles sitting at the curb, & I was already tired & I had a 4-hour drive ahead of me, I didn't even hesitate, just stuffed as many of 'em as I could into the car & headed home!

I posted this last year (when I was in a suburb of Toronto visiting family) As we drove around here and there, I sat in the car oohhing and ahhh-ing over all the HUGE bags of leaves everyone had at their CURB. You'd have thought I was at Sea world or somewhere, OOOOH look, and AHHHH did you see that?

They give all their scraps, leaves, grass anything green/brown etc. to the city, who composts it for them and then they can go back and get it for free. Otherwise, they pay extra for excess trash...not sure why the word hasn't gotten out about lasagne composting there, I guess with limited space, they cant do it easily...

Oh ya and the boise composting thing :) It should be a crime to allow good compost to go to waste.

You have a mortar and pestle specifically for pulverizing egg shells.

You get caught taking your neighbors fresly cut grass that is bagged up waiting for the garbage man. The neighbor say's what on earth are you doing, I say stealing your grass.

You MAY be a compost wacko if:

-the first forum you turn to every day is about soil/compost/mulch and you spend hours reading about it and plotting how to improve your composting

-you bought an extra blender to break down kitchen goodies. Didn't use it much tho and sold it in my yard sale cause those cute little worms do it so well and save me the work

-you take the time to chop melon peels into little bits so they break down faster

-you insist that the fishermen in the family care for the worms they take fishing so if they don't use them all they will return them to the garden alive

Luckygal- That's great! I always return leftover fishing-trip worms back to the garden- along with the fish heads & offal- good Nitrogen source.
Didn't sell my extra "compost" blender, though!
Good to know me and my tribe aren't the only ones "obsessed" about composting and building better soil.
Keep up the Good Work and Happy Harvesting!

You go on vacation for a week and and make you hubby save all of his banana peels and other scraps in a container in the refrigerator to take back home to the pile :)

--You see the garbage truck take all the yard waste in your block for an entire month of spring, talk to the driver and he says that "there is so little yard waste" that they have been ordered to take it, even though you see a number of bins in your block. Then you decide to start composting and never look back. You are proud to not leave yard waste out ever again.

--You get aggravated to see neighbors dumping their yard waste in PLASTIC BAGS, not just not composting, but sending it to be mummified in landfills, even though yard waste has been banned from landfills for over a decade in your state. Then you call the code enforcement commissioner, and get ignored. Then you try to think on ways of talking to your neighbors in the next block party so they come around. You also think of how to get back at the negligent commissioner.

--You stop junk mail by signing of direct marketing lists, returning junk mail to the offenders, and complaining to USPS' consumer advocate, because you realize that junk mail is not your waste, and you are not even getting paid to sort someone else's trash. As compostable as it may be, junk mail is printed in paper coming from trees that would be better off breathing our CO2, trees that were not ready to enter the compost cycle just yet.

--You ask your neighbors for their leaves and branches. They give them to you. Then they see you shredding and mulching and tell you "I never thought of that!". Then you see them shreding and mulching the year after (it is contagious).

speaking of travel...

I don't want to tell the story again, mainly because I alway mess it up, but someone on this forum took Starbucks coffee grounds on a plane trip.

That's admirably wacko!

You know you're a compost wacko when you read through the thread and see nothing that prompts more than a shrug.

"someone on this forum took Starbucks coffee grounds on a plane trip."

More than one, actually. I carted a suitcase full of grounds home nearly every week for months. There was a Starbucks between the office and the hotel, and the hotel was extended stay, so I could keep my stuff there over weekends and didn't need the suitcase for clothing.

I finally stopped when I got grounds from a different Starbucks that had more drip than espresso (much wetter) and TSA broke open all the carefully triple bagged grounds and neglected to close them as carefully as I had. The suitcase was soaked through (fortunately it was cheap).

Since then, several Starbucks have opened relatively locally.

Probably a newbie wacko experience:

When you put in the few grams of dirt from the sempervivum you won on ebay, and get a shiver knowing that you're introducing nutrients from distant Wyoming into your garden.

Ha ha!

When I first started gardening, I dug some clay soil from the front & hauled it to the back as fill, & the thought crossed my mind that maybe the earthworms would tell their offspring that they'd been abducted by an alien vessel & transported to a new place!

You know your NOT a compost whacko when you're afraid to open that 50 pound bag of two week old grass clippings. It's gonna take quite a bit of Pabst to get that bag opened and mixed with dry leaves. Humpf, and I actually thought I was a whacko, not yet though. I can just imagine the smell.

... when you're reading a scene in a mystery novel talking about lab techs picking through a dumpster of trash to find evidence in a murder and get to a part about a tech holding coffee grounds in his hand and sifting through them to find evidence and getting distracted from the story and thinking "Hey, what a shame the coffee grounds are in the dumpster. I wish I had them for my compost." Totally forgetting that book is a) fiction, and b) the coffee grounds in question are in Miami! :)

ÂYou go through your garbage looking for things that your husband threw out that need to be composted.

ÂYour sister gives you "Let it Rot" paperback for your birthday.

... You walk into the back yard and smell a ammonia like chemical smell and suspect the neighbors are making meth.Then you discover the smell is that pile of sprouted barley you got from the micobrewery.

i am on my way to becoming a compost wacko. I approached a macdonalds, a starbucks and a bakery for their UCG this weekend. after a few puzzled looks, the response was pretty good.

You convince your husband to buy chickens and goats and a chicken coop, rolls and rolls of fencing, and a shelter for the goats, because of their generous contributions to your compost pile.[ The fresh eggs and goat's milk are a side benefit.] Thank you dear! Thanks for all the great ideas y'all! This thread is wonderful!!! Can't wait to see more.....

...when you reflect on how far you've come & you regret the putrescables you couldn't/wouldn't/didn't "save".

One year, I went to "A Taste of Dallas" downtown & felt really foolish carrying my corncob back to the car.

Although I regretted saving only one corncob, I worried about what I'd say if someone asked me what the heck I was doing.

Since the dried husk was still attached, I even thought about saying that I was working on a PTA project involving cornhusk dolls.

Today?

I'd ask the corn-on-the-cob people for a trash bag full of cobs & tell everybody I met to do likewise!

BRAVO, sylviatexas!!!

Quote sylviatexas: "Although I regretted saving only one corncob, I worried about what I'd say if someone asked me what the heck I was doing.

Since the dried husk was still attached, I even thought about saying that I was working on a PTA project involving cornhusk dolls."

Oh! Snort! Like anyone's going to confront a nervous, shifty-eyed, woman clutching a corncob.

...when you keep a couple of trash bags in the trunk.

just in case.