The mysteries of composting

I could kick myself now for not taking pictures of this during the summer. My approach to composting is decidedly laissez-faire.  I just keep burying the kitchen scraps in the same old square wooden-slatted bin, without doing all the turning and emptying and babying that you're supposed to do.  So it's not too surprising that in the early summer I noticed some green leafy things growing out of the pile, looking as though they meant it. Hmmm, they looked sort of familiar, but they weren't one of the usual weeds.  I left them, and they grew taller and wider. Soon there wasn't too much room left for burying new stuff - I was sneaking in the peelings around the edges of the bin. But the leafy things were flowering - pretty little pale yellow flowers.

Then, last week, I got fed up - the leafy things were taking so much space I couldn't dig anything in.  I grabbed the pitchfork and jabbed at the roots of the leafy things, to pull them out and mix them in with the rest of the compost. When I pulled the fork back out, beautiful pale golden nuggets fell away from tines. My first-ever potato harvest! I scrabbled around in there for a good 15 minutes, pulling out the little beauties. Then I scrubbed them with the fingernail brush and left them in a little dish so that the geek could take their portrait:

And then we ate them for dinner.  Yum! Creamy, buttery goodness.  I must try to remember to throw out some rotting ones again next spring.