Carol’s Column

They say a little bit of integration goes a long way

INTEGRATION’S a funny thing. It pops up everywhere.

Why only the other day I found it in my compost heap.

It happened this way.

“What you need in your life is a little bit of integration,” said Hogg MacBull, the gardener’s friend.

We called him in when our neighbours sent an official delegation to complain about the state of our frontage.

“This is not personal,” the chief spokesman said, “but your garden is a disgrace. If you could occasionally mow your lawn — perhaps once or twice a year — we would really appreciate it.

“It’s a hazard. The dustbins in the area haven’t been emptied for a while and only yesterday the municipality discovered the entire herd of dustbin men had been lost in your lawn for a week.

“Little things like this cause unnecessary stress in the suburb.”

Everyone knows that Hogg MacBull is a trouble-shooter so we called him in.

A sprightly man of 93, he wheeled his chair slowly through our garden and shook his head knowledgeably.

“There’s nothing here that a little old-fashioned chicken manure won’t cure.”

We wandered past sweet-peas and marigolds that had never bloomed, clearing a path through the four-metre high grass.

And then stopped in front of the compost heap.

“This is the heart of all your troubles,” said Hogg, scratching his left armpit and shaking his head.

“You’ve got to have integration. A compost heap has to be a happy mixture.”

My husband, a pragmatic man by nature, nodded: “Yes, but where should we start?” he asked.

I beamed with pride. What a pertinent question, I thought to myself.

Once started, Hogg MacBull could not be stopped.

“A good compost heap must be integrated rot,” he said. “You need plenty of manure for your micro-organisms and fungi, dried blood, sewerage sludge, crushed paw paw pips mixed with water, untreated tobacco dust, leaves, the inorganic sulphate of ammonia, peelings, waste and a hormone or two.

“Finally, the great compost heaps of the world always use horse urine as an activator,” he paused.

“Horse urine?” said my husband hesitantly.

“Horse urine,” stated Hogg categorically.

“The finest gardens in the world have compost heaps that have been activated with horse urine. Buckingham Palace, Kew Gardens, the Dublin Botanical Gardens, the Sheik of Araby’s famous perfumed gardens — they all use horse urine.”

We were suitably impressed.

Hogg MacBull drafted a constitution to enable us to get our garden in order.

Being a do-it-yourself family, we followed it with a vengeance.

We hired a bulldozer to remove the stubborn weeds, a front-end loader to redistribute trees and shrubs, six rakes, hoes and spades and a power-driven lawnmower.

Within a week we’d razed the garden and planted concrete everywhere.

“They say this is almost maintenance-free,” said my husband laying yet another concrete block. “Water it twice a day and it’ll grow like a bomb.”

But it was the compost heap that was the problem.

Oh it wasn’t the decaying vegetables, plants and peelings that were difficult to acquire.

And sewerage sludge was plentiful.

No, it was the horse urine that caused a headache.

First of all we had to find a horse.

There are not many horses walking the streets of Johannesburg these days.

We advertised with no success.

It seems that most horses live out of town.

Which was not a practical proposition as one has to be on the spot, so to speak.

And then we found the ideal solution.

His name is Casper and he’s in his twilight years. Indeed, some would label him a geriatric racehorse.

Since last week he has been installed on top of our heap where he is performing to the best of his ability.

The compost grows more fertile by the day and only yesterday as we watched Casper sprinkling in his inimitable way, I heard my husband mutter: “There’s plenty of life in the old horse yet.”

True. Furthermore, we have the most integrated heap in the neighbourhood.

Chicken manure, cow dung, pig droppings and horse urine — no one can touch us.

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