The Danny Woo Community Garden’s Bearcat chipper-shredder somehow got its sticky hands on my personal destiny for today. Jonathan instructed Shuna and me to put the entirety of the 15’x6’ compost pile through our 3” chipper-shredder, so we trucked it up the hill, gathered our pitch forks and safety goggles, and proceeded to approach the small mountain of decaying matter located at the back of the garden.

Soon I was shoving green and brown goods through the machine with a feeling of disgust at the violence of the act. My disgust gave through to pure, greedy enjoyment just as large quantities of white smoke started pouring out of the chipper-shredder, filling the entire pocket of the garden.

“Aaaah! Aaron!” I yelled to my garden colleague who was building a wall further down.

He fixed that and I happily went on my chipping-shredding way. One hour later, though, the teeth stopped masticating. My enthusiastic shoving of plant matter down its throat had caused the machine to loosen its belt, and stop chewing. Sad.

Well, I took the motor off and removed the belt, planning to buy a new one. Then I talked to a guy on the phone who told me to put it back on (after removing the motor again) and then I made lots and lots of phone calls to every hardware store in Seattle that doesn’t carry chipper-shredder belts. When I finally found a place that does sell them (in West Seattle) he needed me to take the belt off again (after removing the motor) and bring it to him so he could be sure to sell me the correct one.

After all that, Princess Chipper-Shredder gets to sleep in the cozy tool-shed tonight because of the rain. Well pooh-pooh.