Joy in Compost

making room for sorrow and joy

Hello dear readers,

Unsettling edginess presides, containing meanness and fear.

The atmosphere is heavy, like the weight of these five gallon buckets of compost.

I feel it, and I imagine you do as well.

But this morning, how could I not feel joy in compost?

I mean, look at how that marbled green wool yarn co-exists with the aging banana peal…

…and how last night’s orange contains this morning’s sweet potato and the kale stem from my lunchtime smoothie.

I laughed at the sight of it all, not because anything in particular is funny, but because it is so completely unapologetically alive.

Egg Carton & Water, April 12, 2017 Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

There is a softness in these moments of letting go.

And a kind of joy we don’t talk about much.

It’s not loud or in your face. It doesn’t insist everything is fine.

It’s just there, in the background, quietly nurturing us.

Tags & Oranges, April 2017 Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

It’s a recognition, perhaps, that nothing is wasted.

There is room for messiness and order, growth and decay.

I wasn’t exactly looking for joy this morning, or a year ago today, or any time I manage the compost, but there it was, hanging out with spent banana and avocado peels, eggshells and bits of yarn.

Compost: unassuming, generous, kind.

It didn’t ask me to fix anything.

It didn’t ask me to be better.

It simply reminded me:

This is how life works, and that’s enough.

If everything comes from the earth, and ultimately returns to her, how shall we choose to live?

Maybe, at least for today, we can choose to let the ‘all of it’ mix, mingle and move on.

Moving on from the mess, 2021 Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

Lilly practices the art of moving on every day. It started early.

The Mess, The Run, & Sleeping it Off, 2021 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

With gratitude for you being you,

Lyn

It’s Spring, 2025 Photograph by Lyn Swett Miller

There is something deeply humbling about compost, especially when it contains food that could have been eaten. How often we forget about or overlook the abundance before us.

Lemons (2023) & Yellow Fruit (2025) Photographs by Lyn Swett Miller

And always, the joy of bundles of color from fruits offering nectar. With gratitude.

PS: It’s my son’s 26th birthday today. I don’t generally share images of my family here, but you can imagine what we looked like together in the delivery room in 2000.