One of my favourite gardening concepts is compost heaps. The idea that you can combine organic leftovers into soil to create natural fertiliser blows my mind.

In a way, we are compost heaps are well. Everything we experience – from the mundane to the extraordinary – gets shoved into our heaps where it is digested and turned into something beautiful. It is from our junk that great ideas begin to grow.

As Ann Patchett wrote in her memoir:

“You will take bits from books you’ve read and movies you’ve seen and conversations you’ve had and stories friends have told you, and half the time you won’t even realize you’re doing it. I am a compost heap, and everything I interact with, every experience I’ve had, gets shoveled onto the heap where it eventually mulches down, is digested and excreted by worms, and rots.

It’s from that rich, dark humus, the combination of what you encountered, what you know and what you’ve forgotten, that ideas start to grow.”