First Day of Summer... Today started very gray, I overslept because there was no light outside, on today, the longest day of the year. Even the birds ( yes we have birds that chirp in the morning in Manhattan) seemed subdued in the mist and gray. I lay in the living room lethargically reading an alarming story about the Shrub administration's reaction to global warming in yesterday's Times and drinking coffee until my friend Judy from the Garden called to see what's up with the Garden Compost, and do I have plans for today etc. About a half hour later, after we both dragged ourselves to the garden for the first day of summer, it started raining lightly, so we decided to erect one of our little tentlets over the compost area so we could work in comfort, protected from the rain, and later, if the sun ever comes out, we could work in the shade.
The tentlets were our brainstorm to protect us from the rain at our annual Garden benefit party this past Wednesday. They looked festive and I hung lights on the musician's tent. Alec Baldwin, the actor, attended and presented one of our environmental awards - a framed picture of the garden to ABC TV for their support of environmental projects in NYC. Pictures of the garden are posted at www.westsidecommunitygarden.org.
The tentlets are 10 foot square shelters made out of aluminum poles that hold up a roof made out of some type of translucent plastic cloth. Judy and I found them last Saturday while we were on our annual quest to find the cheapest decent paper plates for the benefit. We found cheap plates and better yet we found the tentlets for $19.97 at National Wholesale Liquidators out on Route 17 in New Jersey.
Anyway, the compost area is exactly ten foot square, with a concrete brick wall behind the bins on the west side, and our tool shed bordering the east side of the compost area work yard. Overhead on the south side of the area is our giant fig tree -[ which made it safely through the winter, thank you very much] and on the north side, where the neighborhood guys hang out on the sidewalk drinking beer and malt liquor, is the compost gate to the garden. The three wooden bins themselves are about three and a half foot square and four foot high, with removable wooden slats on the front and interior walls, and are set flush against the concrete wall.
People come from the neighborhood and deposit their coffee grounds, tea leaves, vegetable parings and rotten fruit through the compost gate onto the end bin. One man keeps his stuff in the freezer and bicycles over from the East Side with bags of frozen spoiled fruit and vegetable waste. There's a stable on 89th Street, so we scrape up horse offerings left on 90th Street on their way to the Central park Bridal path. Although Judy will reluctantly carry the pail for me while I collect the offerings, only a Presbyterian will actually scrape the stuff up off the street in broad daylight.
Today, although the compost pile was hot underneath, it was smelling rank because it had rained during the night and it's way too wet. The remarkable thing about a good balanced compost pile is that if its kept turned and has a goodly population of red worms, it has a fresh almost piney smell, despite all the horse manure.
So these two women of a certain age - let us say well over 50- dragged one of the disassembled tentlets from the shed to put up in the lightly sprinkling of rain. Because of the presence of the compost bins, all assembly had to be done above the bins, sort of in midair, with Judy holding the assembled pieces flat while I formed the aluminum rod roof assembly.
The first problem was assembling the slippery wet aluminum rods. They are numbered with tiny numbers that can't be seen by middle aged eyes without glasses to clue you in as to where each rod fits. The # 7 roof rods have little wire loop tabs that must be depressed firmly with a (wet) thumb while the rod slides into a rigid plastic corner of the roof square.
After the wire things slide into the plastic joint, they pop up through a slot to strengthen the corner joint. Unfortunately, the wire tabs are made for heavy strong men's hands to depress, and we struggled away for about a twenty minutes in the intensifying rain to get the rods properly seated in the plastic corner joints. The rain intensified then, and we stood in the tool shed for a few minutes while it poured, nursing our smarting thumbs while Judy prayed loudly to the God of Complaining.
When it let up a little, the "dimples and bumps " problem emerged when I charged out to work on the center roof rods and side rods which connect the corner joints together.
The dimples and bumps problem is based on the premise that in cheap tentlets, each connecting aluminum rod has a dimple which corresponds to its corresponding rod's bump. The dimples and bumps must be mated exactly to slide together, and then you must turn the rods smartly to lock them. Naturally, there are two ways to turn the rods smartly, and if you lock them in the wrong direction, it's impossible to proceed to the next step of assembling the tentlet.
As the rain intensified again Judy stood in the downpour holding the partially assembled rods in midair while I tried to locate the dimples and bumps and clicking them together one way, then another, until the roof assembly was "complete."
Soaking wet by now, we took the balled up plastic cloth roof and stood under it while we spread it onto the roof rod assembly. As soon as the roof cloth was partially stretched over the rods, they began popping apart again, and the dimples and bumps had to be lined up again and turned smartly again, this time under the plastic cloth, until the roof assembly was squared off over our heads while we held it flat, so we could fit the tentlet to the corners.
Wholly disheartened by now, I put the top legs into the corner elbow, hoping that they would lend some structural integrity to the assembly, and also hoping that the legs would not slip out and fall between the compost bins and the concrete wall. [ did I mention that the bins are bolted to the wall?]
Against all reason, this worked after a fashion. Although the dimples and bumps kept popping apart, we finally got them to hold together by looping the tentlet's interior Velcro tabs tightly onto the aluminum rods. But, while this operation was underway, rain collected in the slack pockets of the roof where the dimples and bumps were coming apart and dumping down on us when we Velcroed the tentlet to the rods. After more trial and error, we put both top and bottom leg sections on each corner and pulled the tentlet down over each corner, stretching the tentlet tails down each leg and fastening them to a hook at the bottom of each pole to form a tight structural unit. Of course we couldn't open the tool shed door, but a couple of blue slates and Belgian blocks dragged over to prop up the legs of the tentlet by the tool shed raised it enough to provide clearance for the door. Yes, it's lopsided, but we will be able to turn the compost in comfort in the only tented compost bins in New York City.