My compost pile is taller than I am

Just after dawn, there is a golden hour—sometimes two—when it’s cool enough to work in the garden comfortably and the world is quiet. Every morning, I have my coffee, open all the windows to air out the house, and head outside. This time of year, garden work is mainly weeding and trimming and this morning my target was an overgrown beauty bush surrounded by weeds. By the time I was done, the bush was neatly weeded, trimmed, and mulched. All the weedings and trimmings went onto the latest compost pile, which was taller than I was by the time I was done.

The tall compost pile is the newest pile. I usually keep four piles in various stages of decomposition and they get shorter with age and use. But I go through a lot of compost and even the oldest pile, the one I draw from when I need compost for the garden, is not all that done, so I have to sieve it to remove twigs and eggshells and the like. It seems to be a fact of life here that there is never enough compost.