As a young boy, I had to contend with my grandfather’s compost heap. It was a veritable Vesuvius of foul-smelling, putrescible plant waste, a metre high and hidden behind a privet hedge.
We had placed all the weedy waste in it a year before. As we started the annual spring gardening day, the first area we had to clear was the now weed-covered and unsightly compost heap.
By the time we had cleared the weeds sprouting from it, half the day and most of our energy was gone.
