What are the sure signs that you are having a compost crisis? Tell us online, and we'll print the best ones in an upcoming issue of OG. (For ideas, see "6 signs you're a problem gardener" in the Jan./Feb. '02 issue, page 38.)

Please limit your response to one or two sentences.

Thanks!
Therese Ciesinski
Associate Editor
OG

You spend (too) many afternoons lovingly picking redworms and their cocoons out of your just-finished compost.

You cross your fingers that the scent of now-steaming horse manure in your hot pile won't offend your next door neighbors.

You look longingly when driving by shredded leaves and lawn trimmings others have left for waste collection.

Thinking that your compost pile doesn't have enough "green material," you go and take everyone's Halloween pumpkins from the trash.

To alleviate the winter blahs you go outside to smell the sweet scent of your compost in the making.

You never look at "poop" quite the same.

It looked finished so you poured it on your plants and had watermelon seedlings EVERYWHERE!

Sending my wife to work with a recently aquired load of cow manure still on my pickup...got home too late to unload it!!

Called my rural trash pickup service and cancelled

Hoping the neighbors won't see you "tunneling in" head-first to the center of your compost bin to see if there's any good stuff ready to be used in the very center.

So as not to offend the neighbors, I spray painted my two metal trashcans that I use for composting with an ivy design (in two shades of green and one tan)

Last winter (and this one I'm sure) in rain, snow, and at night...twice a week, pitchfork in hand, I turned the black gold!

I have snuck out of my house at night, plastic bottle in hand with watered-down human urine in the middle of the winter.

Begging my botany students' parents to bring bagged leaves and grass clippings for the school compost pile.

Chipper-shredding the neighbors' discarded christmas trees.

Transporting the entire contents of a disillusioned composter's bin from his house to mine half a block away, one wheelbarrow load at a time, while ignoring the stares of passing motorists. (Just taking my grass clippings out for a stroll, what are you looking at?)

Having the neighbor's six-year-old tell you the exact words his dad used to describe your (admittedly out-of-control) compost piles.

Whoops to my eariler submission...the urine goes into the compost bin to keep it moist and add more nutrients...after I read it I sounded like I just take it outside. I know it sounds disgusting, but if you are healthy, there is quite a bit of vitamins and minerals.

I have also had my friends and neighbors call me when they've bagged their leaves...so I can drive by, pick up the bagged leaves and bring them to my house.

You never look at leaves the same.
You never look at cows and horses the same.
You hope the bat, flying around your house at dusk, provides some guano in the right spots.
Leftovers take on new meaning at family dinners...if it's green it goes home with me for my compost! And thank you very much.

Not mine, but a forum buddy's pickup brokedown after being loaded with manure. Mechanics refused to work on it with the aroma so she had it towed home to unload, then towed back to the shop.

You use urine as an activator in your hose-end sprayer, but put in a few drops of blue food coloring in case the neighbors are watching you make the pile.

You run outside when it starts raining to make sure your pile's well covered.

You proudly offer a large bag of finished compost to a new, gardening neighbor as a gift.