Hey Bud, you'd make a good future candidate for compost (read on in today's story…)! This beautiful California poppy is growing in the South of France! Malou transplanted it from her garden to mine with the help of Doreen. Thanks, Garden Angels 🙂
remuer (reuh mheu ay) verb
: to stir
remuer ciel et terre = to move heaven and earth
remue-toi un peu = get a move on!
arrête de remuer tout le temps! = quit fidgeting!
le remue-ménage = stir, bustle, confusion
Verb conjugation:
je remue, tu remues, il/elle remue, nous remuons, vous remuez, ils/elles remuent (pp = remué)
Tune Up Your French (click here) with over 900 essential expressions will help you to hone your French-language conversation skills!
A Day in a French Life… by Kristin Espinasse
"Garden Grist"
Compost! Compost! Compost! Compost!
It's a little early on into this compost affair to be writing about the stuff, that is "the stuff of the garden gods!", but, just as the one smitten cannot wait to talk about the object of her affection, I am impatient to share this steaming heap of burning love with you!
Speaking of steaming… that is what our compost pile is supposed to be doing, n'est-ce pas, steaming? (Something about aerobic bacteria? Something about C:N ratios?) Ah, well! Steaming will come! Restons simples! No need to complicate the compost pile. As Scott Meyer, editor of Organic Gardening says: "Compost happens!" For composting, at its most basic, is simply the piling up of waste. It will eventually break down of its own accord!
Meantime, with amorous abandon, I am tossing banana peels, egg shells, tea leaves and coffee grounds, grass clippings, cardboard, fumier, dried leaves and… weeds? I wonder whether I can add weeds into the compost pile?
A quick internet search reveals that les mauvaises herbes are okay–just be sure to remove the seed heads! I don't trust my seed-heads judgment, so oublions weeds for the moment! All that's left to do now is to observe the brown-green ratio or that C:N business we mentioned earlier. This delicate ratio seems to be the key… to steam! Finding the right carbon to nitrogen balance will mean the difference between two months and one year (the time it will take to break down the plant waste).
Because I can't wait another second, I will now employ the French verb remuer! And now, chers fellow composters, remuons! Besides the C:N conundrum, we'll need oxygen to get the compost heap heating up. For this, il faut le remuer.
The only other ingredient in the simple "C Now"* (I want to see my Compost NOW) is W for "water"! For that I will take advantage of all the spittoons that "build up" this time of year, when wine tasting season picks up along with the arrival of vineyard visitors. We used to empty the spittoons into the garden… now they'll be emptied on top of the compost pile!
As for that heap of burning love just outside the door, it's calling me now… I'm off to remuer le monticule of plant matter… which will, soon enough (I hope, I hope!) turn into dark compost caviar… good enough to hand-feed to the other loves in the garden: the tomatoes, the flowers, and the trees.
***
Comments & Corrections welcome!
I am a compost newbie! Please share your ideas on how to succeed in composting! Apart from the C NOW essentials, below, and the banning of animal waste (apart from le fumier from herbivores), what can you tell me about compost? Thanks for joining in today's discussion here, in the "compost" box!
Carbon (brown/dry materials: leaves, straw, "clean" paper, cardboard)
Nitrogen (green & wet materials: fruit/veg cuttings, house/garden plants…
Oxygen
Water
French Vocabulary on the way… check back shortly, here.
n'est-ce pas? = Isn't that right?
restons simples = let's keep it simple
le fumier = manure
les mauvaises herbes = weeds
oublions = let's forget about that
remuons = let's stir
remuons le monticule = stir the mound
.
Bestselling books on the French language:
1. The Ultimate French Verb Review and Practice
2. Exercises in French Phonics
Not so best-selling… but a fun book on the French language!
Words in a French Life: Lessons in Love and Language from the South of France
Read the French Word-A-Day archives: you'll find a lot of "Abandoned Chair Lust" and other stories… click here. Photo taken in Les Goudes… at the end of Marseilles…
Smokey "R" Dokey on his way to visit Mrs. Canard… who lives in the brook just below, with her soon-to-be born ducklings, or canetons (boys) and canettes (girls).
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Thank you Kristin for the composting words. I will soon be volunteering in some French gardens and they will surely come in handy!
Ah, composting. Composting toilets, composting kitchen scraps, sheet composting, worm farms, the stuff of great and bountiful gardens.
Weeds in the compost pile: some weeds will survive the compost pile, and you will be spreading them further along with the compost. Check with the locals to know for sure about this one. They will know which weeds would be safe for the compost pile, and which should be disposed of in a different manner. In a garden here in Auckland, they keep a barrel of water for the tradescantia – seems to be the only way to kill it, short of putting it in the freezer!
Grass clippings. Lovely for compost, but if left in a big pile on their own, they can breed flies that bite. I would keep the layer of grass clippings no deeper than 6 inches to avoid this. I mention this just in case you are offered grass clippings from neighbours, and end up with lots of them waiting to be spread out on the garden.
I love mulching – it discourages weeds, improves the soil, is way easier to spread mulch than weed, and helps the soil retain moisture. And you can tuck kitchen scraps underneath it when it is deep enough. This is what is called ‘sheet composting’. The dogs might find the smells a bit too interesting, though, and retrieve the kitchen scraps from under the mulch. Happy spring!!
I was in the French garden store Botanic the other day, and they had giant poppy plants for sale…oh so tempting for my yard!
Our daughter is a composter. She has her worms that she has been breeding to help her garden grow. She even gave me a composting barrel for my birthday where I dump the grass clippings in the top then our neighbor comes and gets the compost out the bottom – it seems to be working.
When Smokey “R” Dokey went to visit Mrs. Canard, did he go for a neighborly visit or to cause mischief? From the picture it looks like Smokey was looking to cause a little mischief.
Your word of the day caught my eye as remuage is on the tips of everyones tongues in Champagne where we just finished a wine tour. Up there they remuent the bottles but it’s kind of related – to get the debris and organic waste eventually out of the bottle of champagne. I hope that sediment makes it to a giant compost pile!
I’m a big fan of compost piles too, though you’re already more methodical about it than I am. I just toss all our kitchen scraps into a heap in a makeshift composter I made out of wood pallets. Thanks to your post I’m going to be better with the carbon and that pile will reduce more quickly.
Cheers and bon remuage!
Jill