When I was 8, my family moved from our subsistence farm in Wilton to the big city of South Portland. I had never seen so many cars--the day we moved in, Ryan and I spent every possible moment counting the cars that went by the house. In the backyard were several large trees, but the quirkiest and most accessible (i.e., easy to climb with lots of places to sit and build platforms) was one that one of us named "Apple Tree Avenue".
A few weeks ago my mom told me that Apple Tree Avenue was finally dead enough to be a hazard and had to be cut down. When Dad cut through it, the whole middle was rotten. My ears pricked right up: rotten wood? Can I come get some? Not only was there a bunch of nice, punky, crumbly wood, but loads of decomposed soil from the middle of the tree. So now I have a nice hugelkultur in my yard, courtesy of Apple Tree Avenue and grass clippings from my hayfield...er, yard. I threw down some weeds and clippings, then the smaller pieces of rotten wood, then heaps of grass clippings, and topped it off with the soil that I had dug out of the trunk of the tree. Add some squash seedlings from Mom (I'm not sure whether she planted those or whether they just came up in the compost, and have no idea what kind of squash...surprise!), add some bricks for thermal mass, and viola! [sic] Instant squash mountain.