KEEPING GODS HAPPY

At last the sunny cool spring day came when I could harvest my oldest compost, that has been nurturing for a good three years now, so I went out there and set to raking the two long piles into one center pile, a manageable form for bit-by-bit shoveling ad hoc onto my garden.

I was pumped, man: that rich black loamy goodness born of leaves and cuttings, kitchen leavings and wood ash topped off with occasional additions of nature's helpful organisms like a big organic hot fudge sundae would in time elegantly transform the sunrainair and my soil into rotundo potatoes and onions with silly grins, dancing lettuce, rosy-cheeked radishes, a maharajah's weight in ruby tomatoes, golden squashes galore and zucchini choruses fuggeddaboddit, so you can imagine the dimensions of my chagrin when I raked over the first side mound into the center and about a dozen huge kabutomushi larvae tumbled senselessly into the sudden light like big helpless baby aliens and just lay there silently going Huh? Wha? Huh?, slowly grabbing with their suddenly useless little arms at mere air of no purchase.

This I was not expecting. Turns out that the kabuto dynasty had really taken to that patch of compost, made a family tradition out of it even though this year there were no more used-up shiitake logs, which they had flipped for a couple years ago, so there I was just a minute ago all ready to go and now leaning ponderously on my rake realizing that there were probably a couple hundred kabutomushi gonnabes hanging out there in my compost, and no other place to put them even if I wanted to bother winkling them all out and and putting them elsewhere, so I couldn't help thinking along the lines of hey gods aren't we supposed to be sort of working hand in hand here or what, you keep throwing these off-wall problems at me how'm I gonna get this garden in shape, ok, ok, ok, I will...

So I raked it all, the whole thing, into a pile like a huge kabutomushi cake and according to the new rules I have to wait until all the larvae grow up and leave home to pursue their individual beetle careers, which maybe start in June sometime I hope yer happy, gods.

KING KABUTO THROWS IT ALL AWAY

Well the rest of the world may be in several kinds of doldrums, but over here in the Land of Wa things are looking up as of Wednesday, when Japan's new Kabutomushi (rhinoceros beetle) Sumo Champion was crowned in Nakayama.

I keep thinking maybe I should have entered, I have some pretty impressive kabutomushi up here on the mountain, especially around my compost pile. Last fall I posted some photos of my compost-fed kabutomushi larvae, any one of which coulda been a contenda, but I haven't managed any beetles since I was a kid; besides I've been busy recently with snakes and monkeys. Anyway, to join the Kabutomushi Sumo competition you have to be a kid I think, which though I still am in some ways, I think my pension probably would disqualify me.

Anyhow, the pressure of competition all came to a head yesterday in the final match when the pressure proved too much for favorite King Kabuto who, as he neared the top of the pole and was about to snatch a clear victory from the slower King Joe, threw the Championship and his career away by flying out of the arena entirely, giving up all the glitter of stardom for the simple comforts of home.

Personally, I think he made the right choice.

BOB BUNYAN

By now, you kind and discerning visitors to these homely efforts of mine must be growing tired of my recurrent converse about firewood, splitting it, stacking it, all its charm and solid value etc., but when you heat using only a woodstove (catalytic combustor), firewood is a big topic; and because you can only store wood for about three years (especially in this climate) before it begins to lose its firewoodiness, and I've never had a three-year supply since I've lived here - we've been burning pretty much hand to stovemouth for the last 13 years - whereas this year, golden firewood is raining on me from all around and I must strike while the axe is hot, must I not, no time even to straighten out my metaphors, I'm doing pretty much nothing else these non-office days, apart from putting maybe a few spinach seeds in the ground on my way between trees, at odd intervals blowing neighborhood kids' minds with the magnificent menagerie of my humungous compost kabutomushi larvae collection (OK kids, now get ready, I'm gonna lift this used-up shiitake log... OHMIGOD!!) (scroll down to late September for humungolarval pics - they're even bigger now!)... And dealing with firewood, bucking logs, quartering, carrying, stacking, finalsplitting and finalstacking, at the end of the day, before toppling into bed like a felled log, who can keyboard with oaken fingers?

LARVA MINING

One doesn't generally associate neatness with compost; in fact, I never do. For me, compost has always been synonymous with mess. A lovely-in-its-own-beautiful-way mess (with fermentation added, to differentiate it from my workspace). That was certainly true of my own compost pile, a chaotically ongoing accumulation of leaves, cuttings, fertilizers, kitchen garbage, wood ash, wormy chestnuts, chestnut-burr ash and various other random organic detritus of country living.

A couple of weeks ago (as chronicled below) I added some lime to the pile and raked it all to one side to sort of sit there and cure, and it was a mess the way I left it, sort of like a stormy sea of darkly vague unpleasantness. I was going to rake it all out maybe this weekend if I could find the time, good luck on that, and then at some point spread it all on the garden and make ready for next year's pile, starting with the soon-falling leaves, but before I had to do all that postponing I had a little brainstorm.

As the attentive reader will recall, I had found a number of kabutomushi larvae in the pile when I was raking it out, they seem to like it there, for its heat, softness and nutrition... I thought maybe since kids (mainly boys) paid money for the adult insects, someone might like to take a few pre-insects for their science class or something, then they'd get their beetles and I'd get my compost pile properly organized, without lifting a finger.

So on the off-chance we checked with the Haruya boys and learned that they had found a female kabutomushi in September and were now kabutomushi fanatics hoping that she'd laid some eggs and they'd get some larvae, so when we said you want some kabutomushi larvae for free they said wellberightoverknockknock. You'd think we gave them each a Ferrari, they were so joybouncy. Of course the kabutomushi is the Ferrari of insects among Japan boys, so their delight was understandable.

We got out the rake and let them have at it, imposed a larval quota, first time I ever did that, told them to leave the compost pile neat when they were finished, and when they were done digging up their quota they rearranged everything, you never saw such a neat compost pile, flat and even as a fine dark shag carpet, I'm gonna feel bad messing up that elegant area out there.

COMPOST AND CANDY

Out first thing this morning to start sectioning some firewood but first I had to dump some kitchen garbage on the compost pile but first I had to do what I'd been promising myself I'd do one of these days, decided this was the day: turn the compost pile with the rake.

So I put down the kitchen garbage bag and went and got the rake out of the toolshed but first I had to put some lime over the top of the compost heap but first I had to pull up the weeds so the coast would be clear for the lime scattering (gardening procedural discovery often runs backward) so I began pulling up all the weeds, a lot of them actually vegetables that had sprouted too late from seed in the garbage, and when that was done I went to the lime box and opened it to get the lime but first I had to go and get a trowel to scatter the lime with so I went and got it, then scattered the lime - my plan was advancing at last - then I dumped the garbage over one side of the compost plot then got the rake and began raking one half up over the other and with about the fourth rakeful I uncovered what looks every time like a panicking horse's eyeball staring up out of the earth, shining white and smooth with a dark tinge, like an alien thing suddenly there in the deep soil, it was a kabutomushi larva, head downward in the ground, smooth, round, darkish tail up, as always, about as big as a hen's egg when they get full size, shocking every time, living secretly there in the subsoil...

I dug it out with my fingers and set it aside so I wouldn't step on it or hurt it with the rake, then went on raking more gently and uncovered another one, set that aside too, then another, and another - ultimately five in all - large, heavy, pearly, slow-moving, oddly vulnerable, truly alien-looking things; was about to put them back, cover them over in darkness again and wrap it all up before sharpening the chain saw, but first ran into the house to get the camera and took a picture of the the first four larvae in my gloved hand, then the biggest one alone... (click on that picture for more detail than you might like)

At the end on the left here are those insanely popular kabutomushi larvae made out of chocolate...

Smaller than the real thing, I suspect...
The actual-size creatures would cost a fortune in fine chocolate...
The resulting beetles can be quite expensive too...