"Compost" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... butterflies' and grasshoppers' legs and wings, parts of frogs and toads, and the little pellets usually ejected by owls in the process of digestion. I also found that these mounds were invariably covered by an animal compost gathered from the surrounding prairie. I resolved to put my theory to the test by digging into one of these holes. Here the Indian boy was a great help, as he thoroughly knew his verb "to dig." I followed the hole down through hardpan to a depth of three feet, and back for ...
— Ohio Arbor Day 1913: Arbor and Bird Day Manual - Issued for the Benefit of the Schools of our State • Various
... of every fact in Nature comes from the difficulty of detecting its true connection. There is reality there, even in blight and corruption; something is forwarded, only perhaps not the thing before us,—as the virtue of the compost-heap appears not in it, but in the rose-bed. The artist cannot forego a jot of reality, but the obvious facts are not this, any more than the canvas and the pigment are the picture. The prose of every-day life is reality in fragments,—the Alps split into paving-stones,—Achilles with a cold ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 76, February, 1864 • Various
... we accepted these gifts with more joy and gratitude, and did not think it enough simply to put a fresh load of compost about the tree. Some old English customs are suggestive at least. I find them described chiefly in Brand's "Popular Antiquities." It appears that "on Christmas eve the farmers and their men in Devonshire take a large bowl of cider, with a ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 10, No. 61, November, 1862 • Various
... slavery. The demand from the cotton regions since the war has been enormous for the best artificial fertilizers, and the appreciation of the particular kind made by Walton, Whann & Co. is very marked. Planters have learned the fact, which science and experience demonstrate, that a reliable compost must be now used for the remunerative culture of cotton, as well as of their corn and other staples; and their preference for the superphosphate prepared by this firm over most other fertilizers is evinced by the fact that their demand has for several years been largely in excess ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science - April, 1873, Vol. XI, No. 25. • Various
... time. Who were the hearers? The majority of them were slaves; many had till a short time before been unconcerned about religion; in all probability not a tithe of them could read or write. Yet what did Paul give them? Not milk for babes; not a compost of stories and practical remarks; but the Epistle to the Romans, with its strict logic and grand ideas, or the Epistle to the Ephesians, with its involved sentences and profound mysticism. He must have believed that they would understand what he wrote, though scholarship ...
— The Preacher and His Models - The Yale Lectures on Preaching 1891 • James Stalker
... the roots in it until the crowns are just covered, and about 2 inches apart, in rows 6 to 8 inches apart then place on top about 8 inches of any kind of light covering such as leaf mold or other light compost. This must be light or otherwise the heads which will grow from the crown will open out instead of keeping firmly closed and conically shaped. On the top of the light soil, manure (if it can be procured ...
— Vaughan's Vegetable Cook Book (4th edition) - How to Cook and Use Rarer Vegetables and Herbs • Anonymous
... costs the same as farmyard manure the former is better. Reasons for this being so. A compost of pink soil and manures may be made, which will equal good farmyard manure, and cost ...
— Gold, Sport, And Coffee Planting In Mysore • Robert H. Elliot
... good profit and a loss on the crop depends much upon the use of land and manures perfectly free from foul seeds of any kind. Ashes, guano, seaweed, ground bones, and other similar substances, or thoroughly-rotted and fermented compost, will ...
— Cattle and Their Diseases • Robert Jennings
... heretic bones. "The earth is invisible," says he, .... "and which is more, the eye of man never saw the earth, nor can it be seen without art. To make this element visible is the greatest secret in magic .... As for this feculent, gross body upon which we walk, it is a compost, and no earth but it hath earth in it .... in a word, all the elements are visible but one, namely, the earth: and when thou hast attained to so much perfection as to know why God hath placed the earth in abscondito, thou hast an excellent figure whereby to know God himself, and how he is visible, ...
— Five Years Of Theosophy • Various
... not a fountain cleaned, but the reigning pope has signed the work with his Roman and pagan title of "Pontifex Maximus." It is a haunting passion, a form of involuntary debauchery, the fated florescence of that compost of ruins, that dust of edifices whence new edifices are ever arising. And given the perversion with which the old Roman soil almost immediately tarnished the doctrines of Jesus, that resolute passion for domination and that desire for terrestrial glory which wrought the triumph of Catholicism in ...
— The Three Cities Trilogy, Complete - Lourdes, Rome and Paris • Emile Zola
... your food. It's disgusting, it's beastly. You Yankees load your stomachs as a Devonshire man does his cart, as full as it can hold, and as fast as he can pitch it with a dung-fork, and drive off; and then you complain that such a load of compost is too heavy for you. Dyspepsy, eh! infernal guzzling, you mean. I'll tell you what, Mr. Secretary of Legation, take half the time to eat that you do to drawl out your words, chew your food half as much as you do your filthy tobacco, and you'll ...
— The Clockmaker • Thomas Chandler Haliburton
... modern consciousness. The process of the last three centuries, attended as it has been by serious drawbacks to the Spanish and Italian peoples, and by a lamentable waste of vigor to the Teutonic nations, has yet resulted in a permeation of the modern compost with the leaven of Christianity. Unchecked, it is probable that the Renaissance would have swept away much that was valuable and deserved to be permanent. Nor, without the flux and reflux of contending principles ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volumes 1 and 2 - The Catholic Reaction • John Addington Symonds
... surface, as gladiolus seedlings greatly dislike waterlogged soil. An inch of pebbles, broken shells or sterilized potsherds should be placed in bottom and pot or box filled to within one-half inch of top with light compost made of two parts rich loamy soil and one part sand, well mixed together. Some very old fine manure may be used, but it should be confined to the bottom third of the receptacle and not come into contact with the seeds or resulting ...
— The Gladiolus - A Practical Treatise on the Culture of the Gladiolus (2nd Edition) • Matthew Crawford
... and—wait five years! Vegetables dash out of the husbandman's garden to reappear at the city market. Madame Deschars, who possesses a gate-keeper that is at the same time a gardener, confesses that the vegetables raised on her land, beneath her glass frames, by dint of compost and top-soil, cost her twice as much as those she used to buy at Paris, of a woman who had rent and taxes to pay, and whose husband was an elector. Despite the efforts and pledges of the gate-keeper-gardener, early peas and things at Paris are a month in advance of ...
— Petty Troubles of Married Life, Part First • Honore de Balzac
... Craig in honour, as a man who "knew his business" and who had great lights concerning soils and compost; but he was less of a favourite with Mrs. Poyser, who had more than once said in confidence to her husband, "You're mighty fond o' Craig, but for my part, I think he's welly like a cock as thinks the sun's rose o' ...
— Adam Bede • George Eliot
... Progress'; that is, it is no allegory. The beholding "but awhile," and the change into "nothing but rags," is not legitimately imaginable. A longer time and more interlinks are requisite. It is a hybrid compost of usual images and generalized words, like the Nile-born nondescript, with a head or tail of organized flesh, and a lump of semi-mud for the body. Yet, perhaps, these very defects are practically excellencies ...
— The Literary Remains Of Samuel Taylor Coleridge • Edited By Henry Nelson Coleridge
... accordance with the variety planted. Unless natural drainage is well-nigh perfect, the border must be under-drained with tile and in any case a layer of old brick or stone is needful to make certain that the drainage is perfect. At least two feet, better three feet, of the border compost should be placed above the drainage material. In a border made as described, the grape finds ample root-run, but not too much, as in a surprisingly short time roots are found throughout all ...
— Manual of American Grape-Growing • U. P. Hedrick
... shaken out of their pots; their roots reduced and repotted into small pots in a light sandy loamy compost. Sow seeds, and also ...
— In-Door Gardening for Every Week in the Year • William Keane
... other hours followed in which I found myself smacking my lips over some tolerably infernal messes. When I had been without food forty-five hours I ran eagerly to the bell and ordered the second dish in the bill, which was a sort of dumplings containing a compost ...
— Innocents abroad • Mark Twain
... is the superficial stratum in which praise and blame find their sphere of action,—the region of comparisons,—the habitat where envy and jealousy are to be looked for, if they have not been weeded out and flung into the compost-heap of dead vices, with which, if we understand moral husbandry, we fertilize our living virtues. It is quite foolish to abuse this thin upper layer of our mental soil. The grasses do not strike their roots deep in towards the centre, like the oaks, but they are the more useful and necessary vegetable ...
— The Atlantic Monthly , Volume 2, No. 14, December 1858 • Various
... in learning about the role of compost in soil fertility, better soil management methods and growing healthier, more nutritious food. Much like a serious home bread baker, audience one seeks exacting composting recipes that might result in higher quality. Audience two primarily wants to know the easiest and most convenient way to ...
— Organic Gardener's Composting • Steve Solomon
... &c. 299; slough, peccant humor, pus, matter, suppuration, lienteria[obs3]; faeces, feces, , excrement, ordure, dung, crap[vulgar], shit[vulgar]; sewage, sewerage; muck; coprolite; guano, manure, compost. dunghill, colluvies[obs3], mixen[obs3], midden, bog, laystall[obs3], sink, privy, jakes; toilet, john, head; cess[obs3], cesspool; sump, sough, cloaca, latrines, drain, sewer, common sewer; Cloacina; ...
— Roget's Thesaurus
... Agaricus subrufescens was described by Dr. Peck from specimens collected on a compost heap composed chiefly of leaves, at Glen Cove, Long Island. It occurs sometimes in greenhouses. In one case reported by Peck it appeared in soil prepared for forcing cucumbers in a greenhouse in ...
— Studies of American Fungi. Mushrooms, Edible, Poisonous, etc. • George Francis Atkinson
... every time my orders are such as he has never been given before. After a time he will, I think, become imbued with my unorthodoxy in these matters; and meanwhile he has the true gardening spirit and loves his work, and love, after all, is the chief thing. I know of no compost so good. In the poorest soil, love alone, by itself, ...
— The Solitary Summer • Elizabeth von Arnim
... compote" (which meant compost), "four are shifting the oats for fear of a touch of mildew, ...
— Anna Karenina • Leo Tolstoy
... conductor discharging its electric shocks, or a pile composed of many chemically-decomposing substances, or a light-engendering magnetic apparatus! In such a chasm lie buried thousands of years that compost the history of ...
— COSMOS: A Sketch of the Physical Description of the Universe, Vol. 1 • Alexander von Humboldt
... feet above the surface of the water. The walls of this structure are often five or six feet thick, and the roofs are all finished off with a thick layer of mud laid on with marvellous smoothness. These huts form the winter habitations of the beavers, and as this compost of mud, grass and branches becomes congealed into a solid mass by the severe frosts of our northern winter, it can easily be seen that they afford a safe shelter against any intruder and particularly the wolverine, which is a most deadly enemy to the ...
— Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making • William Hamilton Gibson
... to meet the needs of the quantity of nuts in hand and should be prepared, preferably the fall before, by stirring the soil deeply and thoroughly working into it a goodly supply of well rotted stable compost. ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Fifteenth Annual Meeting • Various
... marsupial!" retorted the bear in a rage; "you expect my oil to give you hair upon your tail, when it will not give me even a tail. Why don't you try under-draining, or top-dressing with light compost?" ...
— Cobwebs From an Empty Skull • Ambrose Bierce (AKA: Dod Grile)
... "The Compost of Ptholomeus, Prynce of Astronomye, translated out of the Frenche into Englysshe." London, printed by Robert Wyer, no date, 12mo. There is also another edition of the same work, London, printed by ...
— Notes & Queries 1850.01.12 • Various
... confessed culprit would go towards the apartment of the holy inquisitor; but in the act of setting foot at its entrance, the trap opened, and the world of the living heard no more of him. I examined some of the earth found in the pit below this trap; it was a compost of common earth, rottenness, ashes, and human hair, fetid to the smell, and horrible to the sight and to the thought of ...
— Life in the Grey Nunnery at Montreal • Sarah J Richardson
... in its rush, and when with frightened bellowings it had come to a stop, it was bogged irretrievably. Madly it struggled, wildly it screamed and trumpeted. The harbour-water and the slime were churned into one stinking compost, and the golden castle in which we clung lurched so wildly that we were torn from it and shot far ...
— The Lost Continent • C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne
... critic of the volume is somewhat puzzled to harmonize the fine rhythm of the periods, and the superb propriety of the tone, with the subject-matter. The bleakest and most ghastly aspects of Nature,—the most prosaic facts of the farmer's life,—Irish servants and compost-heaps,—cows which try to consume their own milk,—beehives which send forth swarms to sting the children of the house, and give no honey,—soils which refuse to bear the products which intelligence has anticipated,—all ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 13, No. 75, January, 1864 • Various
... called the organic elements of wheat (the combustible part) there are seven times more nitrogen in 100 pounds than in a like weight of straw. Hence, if the farmer converts straw into manure or compost, with the view ultimately of transforming it into wheat, it will take 7 pounds of straw to yield nitrogen enough to form one pound of wheat. Few are aware how much labor and money is annually lost by the ...
— The Commercial Products of the Vegetable Kingdom • P. L. Simmonds
... We must plant now in order to secure a spring display of flowers, and for this purpose nothing can be more satisfactory than bulbous subjects, such as hyacinths, tulips, crocuses, and narcissuses. The hyacinth thrives best in a compost of light loam, leaf-mould, and sand; plenty of the latter may be included in order to secure perfect drainage, which is a very important item in the culture of bulbous plants generally. Perhaps no other spring flowering ...
— Little Folks (October 1884) - A Magazine for the Young • Various
... or flower the event abides. There is no heaven for the hopeful dead— No better haven than forgetful sod That smothers limbs and mouth and ears and eyes, And with those, love and permanence and strife And vanity and laughter that they thought was life, Making mere compost of the one who dies. To whose advantage? Nay, there is no God! But He, whose other name is Pitiful, was pleased By melting gentleness whose measures broke The ramps of ignorance and keeps of lust, Tumbling alike folly and the fool to dust, To teach me womanhood until there spoke Still ...
— The Eye of Zeitoon • Talbot Mundy
... composted. For this, a well-drained place should be selected, and the refuse should be kept covered with earth to keep off the flies and absorb the odors that arise from the fermenting material, and to prevent its being carried away by the wind. Lime should be sprinkled about the compost heap, and from time to time it should be drawn away and the place covered with clean earth. It is very unsanitary to throw all of the kitchen refuse in the same place year after year without resorting to any means for keeping the soil in a sanitary condition. Although ...
— Human Foods and Their Nutritive Value • Harry Snyder
... great transactions of future times,—and recollected for what purposes this little plot, by a decree fast bound down in iron, had been destined,—she gave a nod to Nature,—'twas enough—Nature threw half a spade full of her kindliest compost upon it, with just so much clay in it, as to retain the forms of angles and indentings,—and so little of it too, as not to cling to the spade, and render works of so much ...
— The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman • Laurence Sterne
... little realizing what he was doing, he bequeathed this poisonous dross to the Abbey he founded. I am required to lend it in Frankfort, upon undoubted security and suitable usury, that it may stimulate and fertilize the commerce of the land, much as the contents of a compost heap, disagreeable in the senses, and defiling to him who handles it, when spread upon the fields results in the production of flower, fruit, and food, giving fragrance, delight, and sustenance ...
— The Sword Maker • Robert Barr
... fierce pants and deadly groans. Oh, worst infliction of Hell's armory it is to see another suffer! Why was it allowed, Anselmo? Did it come in the long train of a broken law? was it one of the dark places of Providence? or was it indeed the vile compost to mature some beautiful germ? Ah, then, is it possible that Heaven looks on ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 11, Issue 67, May, 1863 • Various
... made quite rich with well rotted compost. I like the plan of preparing the bed a long time before you get ready to set your plants. You can then work the soil over, time after time, and every time kill a crop of weeds. More plants are set in the spring than any other time, but they will grow and do well if set in midsummer or any time ...
— Trees, Fruits and Flowers of Minnesota, 1916 • Various |
