Bathurst Community Climate Action Network

I have just spent most of my weekend in the garden.
One of the many wonderful experiences in the garden is recycling the weeds and old plants back into a valuable resource for new growth and soil enhancement.

The compost heap is a wonder all should enjoy. To pile it high with vegetation and coook poo and the soil clinging to roots and then to come back in but a few weeks and witness the "compression" of this once staggering pile is wonder at the voracious appetites of all those little critters at work there.
This weekend I also had the joy of distributing my two barrels of "liquid manure" on to the garden and recycling that residue through the marvelous compost factory.
I make up my liquid manure from all those weeds which my not be destroyed in my compost system which is of the "cold composting" variety. 
Not that it is in fact "cold" but it is cooler than the "hot" variety. Hot composting is meant to be marvelous of destroying all those seeds and tenacious weeds because it generates tremendous heat and may get up near 60 deg C and from which steam can be seen rising on a cool morning. This method is an aerobic process and involves layering your material and maintaining the correct balance of the Nitrogen, Carbon and Oxygen and water. Your compost heap will often then require regular "turning" to get mixture adequately aerated.
Being more sporadic in my habits, means that the "cold" variety of composting appeals to me more and at least twice a year, I am able to retrieve some rich, sweet smelling compost to put back on the garden.
Uncomposted material on the top of my pile just gets but in as the starter "culture" at the bottom of the next pile.
One of the reasons I am keen on "liquid manure" as well is that our garden was  all covered with "couch" grass when we started. Lovely to sit on and admire, but agressively invasive when in a vegetable garden.
Some friends have simply waved the magic Roundup wand over the patch before turning the soil for vegetables but being a purist by nature, I would prefer not to further enhance Monsando's already inflated profits so went via the physical removal route.
Couch is singularly resistant to physical removal as even short lengths of couch which escape the gardeners attention, reach out their tendrils again to continue their march to growth and reproduction. So it becomes a continual dance with the gardener and the plant. Gardener removes plant and places in liquid manure barrel, fragment of couch continues on its subterranean adventure pushing to the surface when the coast seems clear.
Meanwhile, when the the liquid manure barel has been brewing a couple of months, that beautiful liquid is ready to spread around fruit trees and vegetables and herbs, while the couch has been reduced to a soggy decomposed sludge, just perfect for adding to the compost, now in a form where it will not continue on its dance in the growth as plant, but as participant in the process of rot - which is where I began and why I love it.
Attached is a picture of a recently completed "tree house" for the kids from where they can enter their imaginative world of play and hopefully experience nature around them and take in all its messages. This was inspired by the tree house I experienced at Jim and Julia Blackwoods place which was a fertile place for all of Jim and Julia's girls, including Alice who has just embarked on a cycling journey through Victoria, and NSW visiting schools with a message of living sustainably. After that journey is over, Alice will continue on her way by cycling right around Australia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composting - link the Wikepedia entry on composting.