Humanize the Earth!

I started composting a couple of years ago. I wasn’t a gardener at the time, but it just seemed to make sense. Why send organic matter to the landfill when I could do something else with it. Seemed better than recycling!

When I moved into the HUB Housing Cooperative last spring, the composting effort immediately and drastically expanded. It went from one person and one bin to 8 people and 4 bins!

The more I tended the compost, the more I had an emotional connection to the soil we were creating. And I wanted to grow more plants specifically for the purpose of composting them! It felt to me like converting sunlight into soil.

I didn’t really fully understand the process until last night when I watched Upward Spiral by Paul Krafel. This is a 50-minute self-made film where he shows how bedrock left by glaciers is converted into soil by the process of life! This is the upward spiral. Life create soil just as it requires soil. And the more life there is, the more soil is created, thus leading to more life.

So of course the point is metaphorical about the power of each of us to help humanity move up the upward spiral, but the point I’m so excited about today is the equation in this post’s title.

air + water + sunlight = soil + oxygen

This also comes from Paul Krafel, from the very first issue of his free quarterly newsletter that’s been going for more than 10 years!

What he’s saying (crudely) is that photosynthesis takes carbon dioxide, water and energy from the sun and creates a physical solid (leaves and all plant life) and oxygen. This plant life then either drops as leaves and flowers or dies and drops as the whole thing, decays and creates soil. So far we’re just talking about compost, but here comes the cool part!

When leaves fall, they obstruct the flow of water. This obstruction causes the water to flow slower. A slower flow drops solid matter from the flow to create more soil. The more soil there is, the slower the water runs off and the more plants grow. This is the upwards spiral again!

This whole exploration, and timely email yesterday from a friend suggesting a green roof for the co-op, has me totally excited to plant vegetation on our roof and work on (at least) partial de-paving of our courtyard, to minimize run-off, thus benefiting the whole ecosystem and planet!

Can you tell I’m excited?

Added a few hours later: By the way, the idea of slowing down the water to increase interactions between particles the eventually become soil and thus leads to more vegetation sounds remarkably similar to the idea that slowing down the flow of traffic leads to more interactions between human beings and thus more life to our cities.  Ideally even bikes will feel too fast.