It’s May Day, and my pile is now fully six months old. In November, it rose, phoenix like, from the remnants of last year’s heap of compost, which had been whittled down through the late summer and fall to a small starter mound of rich, dark humus and scrambly stalks and stems harvested from the vegetable garden.

My pile soon swelled with the onslaught of fallen leaves, supplemented by layers of sandy, sinewy seaweed and salt marsh hay beachcombed from the nearby shore and with grass clippings from a lawn revived by the balmy, sun-dappled days of autumn. As the season turned and I finished the yard cleanup before the cold set in, the heap of mostly dry chopped leaves received the spent growth of perennials culled from the garden beds, dried needles of pine and fir, and regular infusions of kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, shredded paper and other organic compostibles. It drank eagerly from the business end of a garden hose, and exhaled a steady stream of vapors from its midst.

For two months, my pile carried a burden of thick insulating snow, before thawing with the strengthening sun of early spring. Despite receiving hundreds of pounds fresh fodder along the way, from a barrel of horse manure to bag catchers full of sycamore seedballs scarfed up from the dormant winter lawn, as well as my efforts to toss and turn it, my pile has steadily settled in upon itself. I’ve trimmed its edges; tidied up the corners and poked and prodded its innards. By volume, it’s shrunken by nearly a third, and by look is now more composed stack than overstuffed heap. From a distance it still seems a big mess of decomposing leaves.

As much as the first half-life of my pile is dominated by dead brown leaves, the ever-quickening race to its fruition as finished compost will be now driven by mass infusions of hot green grass clippings.

Today, a Sunday, is the day I mow the ever-thickening lawn and add its surplus trimmings of minced green blades of grass to my pile. True, over the past three weeks I’ve stuffed it with my neighbor’s artificially enriched clippings, as well as a batch of more naturally nitrogen-spiked grass, courtesy of the resident deer and dog’s urea. But those contributions are just appetizers for the main course of fresh greens. Today marks a literal tectonic shift for my pile, in shape and composition.

Even with the newly sharpened blade set on high, the Toro’s catcher fills quickly. I mulch back into the lawn most of the clippings, yet stop a half-dozen times when the mower chokes to detach the hopper from the mower and dump the moist, fragrant clippings at the base of my pile.

The fresh grass clippings and other recyclables will soon be mixed deep within my pile.

As usual, I set out my other fixings – a week’s worth kitchen scraps from next door and of my own, as well as two small plastic bags of shredded paper from the office. I figure the crinkled white strips, laboriously processed from wood pulp, would make a fine counterbalance to the finely chopped blades of lush green grass. Add too much grass to a compost pile without mixing it with drier, brown materials and a compost heap that’s humming along into a stinky, anaerobic mess.

“Not all grass clippings should be removed from the lawn; when left after mowing, their nutrients enrich the lawn itself, without the application of chemical fertilizers,” I read in “The Rodale Book of Composting.” “However, most lawns do not need as much enrichment as a full growing season’s clippings will provide. Collecting grass clippings also helps reduce weed growth by removing weed seeds from the lawn.

“Freshly gathered green clippings are exceedingly rich in nitrogen and will heat up on their own if pulled into a pile. But, because of their high water content, they will also pack down and become slimy. This can be avoided by adding grass clippings in thin layers, alternating with leaves, garbage, manure and other materials, thus preventing them from clumping together.

“Clippings that have been allowed to dry out will have lost much of their nitrogen content but are still valuable as an energy source and to absorb excess moisture….Grass clippings and leaves can be turned into finished compost in 2 weeks if the heap is chopped and turned every 3 days.”

So here I stand, pitchfork in hand, to at long last begin to unearth the hard-pressed beginnings of my pile from back when. I stick the pitchfork, upside down, into the front edge of my pile to pull a wedge of moist, matted leaves from underneath. My previous working of the pile have helped create a nearly vertical wall, which I undercut by pulling chunks forward to form a front line of decayed, crumbly leaves. It’s the first light of day these leaves have seen since the fall. Each forkful writhes with squiggly worms and glistens with flecks of mica from the beach. Any trace of the seaweed they traveled in on is long gone.

I dig as far under the front wall of compost as I dare, until it threatens to collapse forward under its own weight. I toss a layer of grass clippings into the newly made trench, then cover with several pitchforks full of dried brown leaves gleaned from the corners of the log walls. They appear as fresh as the day they tumbled down from the top of my pile last fall.

I cleave a few more pitchforks of dark, rotted leaf mold from the bottom center of my pile, then stand back to watch the front face of the pile tumble down upon itself. I spread the avalanche out across the new front of my pile to create what amounts to a moraine.

As I excavate further into the center of my pile, I unearth a pocket of pristine leaf litter. Bone dry and compressed into a tightly wadded stack, the leaves lie underneath the digging I have done through the winter. Bound by the weight of all that is above it, the clutch of leaves has repelled any intrusion of water or rot, and now resists even the tines of the pitchfork. I tease the leaves apart bit by bit, and spread them across the newly created trench and cover them with a combination of grass clippings, white shredded paper and moist gatherings from the sides of my pile. Released from their state of suspended animation, they will now fully join the fungible, seething mess of rot and transmutation that is my pile.

Digging out the deepest layers of leaf mold to pull them out to the front of my pile, I uncover a pocket of dry, hard-pressed leaves untouched by the rot that surrounds it.

I dig further into my pile, nearing the heart of it. Again it collapses, and I add more grass, as well as the kitchen scraps, deeply, mostly to play hide-and-seek with my mysterious rodent interloper. Its furtive trail has gone cold, and I can only hope that the mass of grass clippings added to the mix, easily a hundred pounds or more, will mask any scent of food waste to scavenge.

Essentially, I’m stepping my wandering pile forward, according to my plan of turning it inside out and upside down, largely in place. Its front has moved forward about two feet, hard by the edge of the lawn, and is a crumbly mix of nearly finished compost. I make note of using it as a top-dressing for when I plant the vegetable garden, once the risk of frost is past.

I portion out the rest of the grass and shredded paper, tucking it deep within a third trench. I can no longer reach down to ground, but I’m close, and far enough into the center of the pile to come across the barely discernible remains of my earliest insertions of kitchen recyclables and such. I spot a broken egg shell and the skin of an avocado, still adorned with the supermarket stick-on label. The pitchfork snags a seashell, then a wadded up section of soggy newspaper, the bottom of the rabbit hutch from before the snows of late January, I figure. I tease it apart with the tines of the pitchfork and bury it anew with the last of the grass clippings.

To cover the rest of the clippings, I scrape the hard-tine rake across the top of my pile, pulling the outer layer of sun-baked leaves forward, releasing volumes of vaporish steam from the rot taking place just below the surface. I cover it all with fat forkfuls of more raw compost from along the back side, tangly with the rotting stems of the salt marsh hay that insulated my pile through the winter. In short order my pile is newly restored to its customary height. Its front half, at least, is newly suffused with fresh mixed greens and rotting brown.

Next time I mow, I’ll repeat this process, working from the back of my pile, then I will dig inward from each flanking side. It will take me another month or so to get to the very bottom of my pile, the small mound of humus reserved from last season that served as the activator for rot and decay to come. But from today to harvest, my pile will be a most active compost heap, suffused with high-octane grass clippings. Keeping it aerated now becomes my chore, and it will be good hard exercise as I work to expose the compressed leaves deep within my pile and tease them apart to allow my pile’s “Friends of Distinction”*  – the worms, the creepy-crawlers, the mold-makers and microbes – to finish the job.

* The allusion seems fitting to me, for this group recorded a ’60s hit — “Grazing in the Grass” — that makes a great soundtrack for backyard composters:

Grazin’ in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it
What a trip just watchin’ as the world goes past
(Grazin’ in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it)
There are so many good things to see
While grazin’ in the grass
(Grazin’ in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it)
Flowers with colours for takin’
Everything outta sight in the grass
(Grazin’ in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it)
The sun beaming down between the leaves
(Grazin’ in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it)
And the bir-ir-ir-irds dartin’ in and out of the trees
(Grazin’ in the grass is a gas, baby, can you dig it)

Everything here is so clear, you can see it
And everything here is so real, you can feel it
And it’s real, so real, so real, so real, so real, so real
Can you dig it
Whooo-oooh

I can dig it, he can dig it
She can dig it, we can dig it
They can dig it, you can dig it
Oh, let’s dig it
Can you dig it, baby
I can dig it, he can dig it
She can dig it, we can dig it
They can dig it, you can dig it
Oh, let’s dig it
Can you dig it, baby