This year, we're gardening. We're growing food, which is as spiritual a thing as I've ever done. It's really beautiful.

As a result, though, the "trash" we create when cooking isn't boxes and packaging. It's food scraps. And I began to get really tired of throwing them away. Working hard to grow food, then cutting part off and putting it in a landfill where it can't feed us anymore, just seemed stupid.

Compost takes food scraps and makes them into more food. It completes a cycle of life. I wanted a compost pile. But I couldn't have one, because we live in an apartment.

See, our garden is a community garden space, and it's not close to home. Our own yard is small, and we aren't allowed to tear up the grass to make garden space. We do have a little bit of dirt, but not enough to grow much of our food, and certainly not enough to locate a compost heap. But not composting our food scraps was not acceptable to me. What to do?

I got out a five-gallon bucket and started saving the scraps. I didn't know where I was going to put them, and it seemed a bit strange, but I didn't pay attention to those thoughts. I wondered once in a while, as I sliced and cooked, where I'd be putting them. I thought about hauling them to our community garden, but that would require the car, which also seemed dumb. (I usually bike there.) But none of this took up too much of my thinking. Mostly, I just sliced and put the scraps in the bucket.

Two days later, a compost pile appeared in my back yard.

Our neighbors to the back have a house with a lovely garden and a stand of trees back there ("the forest").  We were chatting, and one of them mentioned compost, and how he has lots, and I told him of my dilemma. His wife overheard me, and said she wants to start composting kitchen scraps, rather than just yard waste, and before I knew it, the new community compost pile had been sited on the property line, and had been started with three wheelbarrows of compost from their garden.

Later that night my husband grinned at me, and said that when he saw the bucket of scraps, he knew a compost heap was coming. He thought we'd have to work at it somehow, but "Poof!" he told me. "It just appeared."

According to the Abraham work by Esther and Jerry Hicks, you manifest things when you simply believe they are true. If you want something, you have to imagine it, feel it, know that it's real and it's in your future.  I can't seem to remember that consiciously, but when I remember it subconciously, the results are very cool. :)

I went to a hempfest this weekend. Here's proof!

I was helping at a booth supporting Ron Paul for president. If you haven't learned about Ron Paul, you should. Generally, I think politicians are all part of the problem, but Paul may be an exception. He's a good guy, and could really help to wake people up.

I neglected our community garden space this week, because we've had some rain, and some cooler weather, so I figured it didn't need me. When I got there, I discovered that rain not only waters the plants we planted there, but also the weeds. It's a very green, very weedy garden!

But there's plenty of food growing, and I got some, as usual. Delicious strawberries, onions, carrots...

But that's not what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about how I keep making big mistakes in life, and it seems like the more I learn, the more new mistakes I make.

I've been working on learning to give myself a break when I need it. I grew up with the idea that tiredness is simply laziness with an excuse attached. It's only recently that I learned that I actually get more energy by resting. And yet, I continue to push too hard. It's a struggle every single day to remember to take care of myself.

And then, I am working on eating my wonderful CSA vegetables, and it's terrific, delightful. Then one day I find I'm too busy to cook, and I eat some drive-through crap. Then, it gets to be a habit again, and suddenly I realized that I haven't had decent food in a week.

It seems that I have to learn every lesson about 1000 times before it starts to stick.

And speaking of learning lessons, right now I'm going to work on the lesson about turning off the computer and spending some quiet time with family before I go to sleep. How about you?