Slug Fest

In the garden stands the compost bin. It’s the common green council variety and rather unlovely in its rotund plasticity. Even half hidden by the gooseberry bush it cannot hide that although its function is green/organic, its material construction is not.

However, opening it is always a constant source of fecund interest. Its rotting innards are seething with the paradoxical life of decomposition. Indeed, so effective is the community thriving within it, I find it quite difficult to keep fed.

Most of its inhabitants such as the bacteria and moulds, are invisible to the naked eye, as they work their transformative magic.  The larger life is more obvious and strangely, the individual species come and go, sometimes one creature, sometimes another being dominant. All of this Autumn it has been Brandling worms – unsurprising in a waste bin – but in such huge numbers that they fall off the underside of the lid in huge wildly writhing clumps as I lift it off. The previous summer saw an ants’ nest rising out of the debris like a busy ziggurat made of dryer soil and sand. Today there is a biomass of Slugs, at least twenty I can see. With their beautiful pale mottling I think they are Limacus maculatus the Green cellar slug.( The grey one is an OAP) As they are not plant pests I can admire them with no murderous feelings in my heart. 
'There you are little darlings – a bucket of eggshells, orange-peel and cabbage leaves for your supper.' I shovel a handful or two of escaped worms back in, replace the lid and leave them to it.