Topdressin.biz News: In and Around the world of Compost

Pasadena Star-News - Opinionhttp://www.pasadenastarnews.com/Stories/0,1413,206~11851~2792015,00.htmlConcepts:
sports, compost, Bill Bell, health, sell, drip, education, .
Summary:
GARDENERS and others who discover the joys of composting find that it can become an addiction.On foreign trips, unable to turn vegetable scraps and raked-up oak leaves into the magic of mulch, they become like the homesick American in the Lorrie Moore novel who says to her husband in a Parisian restaurant: "I miss recycling.'Adherents run from those with a single heap or backyard plastic bin in which they make their black gold to massive commercial operations that create, bag and sell compost as fertilizer in nurseries.All can tell you at least a little something about the invertebrates and microorganisms that chew things up and create a little steamy heat.About temperature curves and moisture content and calculating the proper ratio of materials.And then there's Altadenan Tim Dundon, who for over 20 years has been known as Zeke the Sheik, the rhyming king of the amateur compost world.Rather than a little pile that can be turned by a pitchfork, Dundon is the creator, the curator, the proud possessor of a mountain of the stuff and a subtropical garden atop it and in his yard."A weapon of mass creation' he calls the 40-foot-high hill that sits on land adjacent to his own, long owned by Mountain View Cemetery.Now the venerable cemetery, burial spot for many of the founding mothers and fathers of the region, has decided it needs to sell the lot it has allowed Dundon to use.That economic reality may spell the end of the line for Dundon.But his baby's been in a heap of trouble before.Fire and zoning violations caused the county to tsk-tsk.They use it to mulch and fertilize their own gardens.Because what else, to quote Zeke, so deftly "generates the power that makes a flower?'If Mountain View needs to sell, it needs to sell.Another of the excess plots the cemetery owns could be used for composting, or could be sold to allow this one to continue in its present use.Citizens could pool resources to buy the plot or a financial angel could buy it for Dundon and the good of the community.Anything is possible with Dr. Frankenvine and his Ladder of Matter.Here's hoping that one of Altadena's most beloved living landmarks doesn't bite the dust.

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