Compos(t) Mentis

Compost noun; a mixture of decomposed organic substances such as rotting vegetable matter etc which is used to enrich soil and nourish plants.

So says my dictionary on the subject.

People garden for different reasons.  It seems to be fashionable these days to grow your own produce, thereby saving money that you would have spent on vegetables in the shops and, as a by-product, rescuing the entire planet from destruction by carbon dioxide poisoning by not having to import a bag of potatoes from a farm in the next county. 
However, most gardens are status symbols.  Whether you own a stately home with thousands of acres of rambling woodland and formal geometric boxwood hedging enclosing the ornamental duckpond or whether you have a two foot strip of grass between you and the general public, the overwhelming priority is that your garden looks better than the one next door.
It doesn't matter whether you can tell your aster from your lobelia, just as long as the weeds aren't obscuring your view of the outside world and the grass is neatly trimmed, you can hold your head up high in the world.
Another way of saving the planet is to make your own compost, although I doubt if this alone would prevent an attack from unfriendly aliens with an orbiting thermo-nuclear weapon.  However, if compost making is the way to avoid Armgeddon, I'm doomed.
I got my first garden when we moved to a new house in 1977. In the intervening 34 years, I have religiously kept garden and kitchen waste in a variety of containers in different conditions for different lengths of times and have produced enough compost to fill a small flowerpot, though it wasn't filled right to the top.
There are many books written on the subject of compost making, but the main gist of the instructions is that you have a heap of organic material which heats up and rots to produce a sweet smelling, fine and crumbly brown medium which can be used to enhance your garden soil.  It's easy isn't it?
All you need to help Mother Nature along is air - and water if the compost gets too dry.
Air is no problem.  This comes free on a daily basis courtesy of the atmosphere.  I have never had a problem of my compost being too dry.  Insects and worms that stray into my compost heap quickly develop gills or they drown.  Even in death they don't contribute to the organic mix that I am striving for as they are preserved intact as if suspended in amber.
Two years ago I purchased a purpose-made compost bin with a lid.  I raised it up off the ground to prevent water rising up from below; I added dry ingredients in the form of ripped up newspaper; I bought a box of accelerant as recommended by a friend (who incidentally told me that making compost is as easy as falling off a log).  Two years later, when I open the bottom door of my bin what do I find? Potato peelings, leaves, newspaper pieces that are still readable - all covered in a cold, wet slime, but still fully recognisable as the 'waste' products that were added months before.
My family do not understand the anguish and frustration that I suffer as a result of my not being able to control a natural process that should proceed without any human intervention.  Cruel remarks have been made to the effect that when I die they are going to lay me on my own compost heap in the hope that I will be preserved for ever.  Given that some of the dead plants that I have discarded on to my heap have actually grown there, I might even come back to life.
In the meantime, I'm off to balance on a log and see if I can defy gravity as well.