Little Babies, Proud Parents and Why I Love Garbage

Gardening is like parenting, or how I imagine parenting to be, as I only have experience with the former. I have received several phone calls this last week from an elated Sydney heralding the emergence of a new seedling. What's more, each call might have sounded exactly the same. "Marc, we've got a new baby ______ (insert vegetable's name here). " I'm not making fun of her either, because when I return home no more than three or four hours later, I cannot help but lift open the cover on every single tray and see what my little babies are doing. The beets are my favorite. So colorful right from the start.

The only difference I can see between parenting and gardening in these instances is that when one of my coworkers gets a call from their spouse regarding their children and closes the conversation out with something like, "sure I can pick her up from school..." Everyone around looks at them knowingly as if to say, parenting is the most noble of endeavors and construction of this house can wait until you've ironed out that detail of your afternoon. When I hang up the phone beaming with the pride of a new father, I get quizzical looks. It's common knowledge that my family consists of a dog, who is usually standing right there. I don't want to explain because it's kind of embarrassing.
"What was that all about?"
"Oh, I just got news about another baby beet."
.......Silence. I can't even begin to describe the look, but it definitely has some disbelief, disdain, and genuine concern thrown in there.

The baby plants are not even the half of it. The worms. At least they have a heart of sorts. We have several worm boxes in the garage. These worms are little warp speed composting factories, and their castings offer a highly concentrated well balance plant food. Yes I have a garage full of worms and I collect their poo. These boxes are also for sale. I know that is shameless, but that is kind of the point.

It's hard to even know where to start with the worms. Unlike the plants that I feel like I actually am raising from infancy, the worms were adopted All ten pounds of them. We are talking ten pounds of actual worm here, traveling in a composted sawdust medium. Two pounds of worms in each container. That's right a pick-up truck load of writhing "red wigglers." That is their species, not some nickname.

The worms have been an adventure from the beginning. From their first night home when we inadvertently sealed the container too tight, and almost killed them all, to the realization that a household of three people and one dog doesn't produce nearly enough vegetable scraps to feed ten pounds of red wigglers. Also worms prefer their scraps chopped up, don't particularly enjoy coffee grounds, or at least not our coffee grounds, and best of all can tell you when they are not happy. If there is not enough food, air, moisture, darkness, or too much, moisture, light, or you don't hold your mouth just right when you check on them, They try to leave. It's really just like a baby crying, except you have to listen really closely if you want to hear the worms crying.

It was touch and go there for a few days. Like any new parents we wanted to do well, and as I've mentioned we almost killed the poor things through gross negligence. So, we had some guilt to cope with like any self-respecting parents. The moments that really brought Syd and I together as parents though revolved around our evening check of the boxes. Did they eat the food? Are they wiggling like they should? Was it really a good idea to try to dress that one in a pink pajamas when we can never be sure of their gender? And most importantly, why are they trying to leave??? Don't they like us? Eventually we worked out the kinks and we have three happy boxes of worms. We've sold some and actually had to split one group into two smaller ones. Yes they are reproducing!! After one night of separation anxiety, they seem to be doing well. And now, we've enlisted the help of several neighbors and it's totally normal to come home to a bag of putrid veggie scraps on the doorstep. It takes a village!

Which brings me to my next point. Garbage, or compost to be more precise. You have to have it, and when you expect to share it, you have to have a lot of it. Spent grain from the Outerbanks Brewing Station, seaweed from some unsuspecting sound front beach, horse manure, etc. by the truck load. Hauling around trash is one thing, it's the getting it that is making me seem crazy even to myself. I will do or say just about anything to get my hands on some good garbage. Or, even worse, spot some discarded material in public and think to myself, the worms would really like that. I mean people will do anything for their kids right?