The smell of decomposition, the good kind. I once had a teacher who said it was the smell of sex. At the time I looked at him quite sceptical but now I know he’s right: When you walk in a healthy, dense forest, your feet sink with every step into the biggest brothel you can imagine. Duhuh… no, duff! When you lift the roof - the dry layer on top - you can see where the party’s going strong. Eating, drinking and making love on an ongoing basis. It’s all sweaty and maybe even a bit warm but your eyes won’t let you spy on the numerous but too small to be detected guests.

The duff layer is where it all happens, the decomposition of the leaf litter and other organic drop-downs turning everything into black gold: fertile soil.

Those native microbes do most of the job although there are many more critters taking it to an extra level, some of which we cán see like worms, millipeds and woodlice.

We do not have a forest but jeez do we want one! So besides seeding and planting all kinds of trees bushes and cuttings we put loads of mulch in and on the sides of the tree lines. We also incorporate - when available - big chunks of wood. Lovely but not lively, our red light district still needs guests.

To achieve this we resort to illegal means and set on a poaching tour along hot neighborhood groves where we abduct the native microbes in big buckets. At home we pour them in a wheelbarrow. To keep them quiet we stuff them with molasses initiating a party on the spot. We add just enough water to keep them alive, put them all together in a big container and - as befits a true violator - we dance and stamp inside the container to quiet them. Then the lid goes tightly on.

Secretly the microbes keep making love and multiply and multiply till all the sugars are consumed and only then most go dormant. When we open the container after a month they smell sweaty, fermented and are all saucy due to the lack of oxigen, space, food and water. We put a few scoops of the hostages in an old pillowcase which we then hang in a big bucket with rainwater which quickly turns brownish with the now liquified duff. With a stick we swirl the water around for many minutes in a row and repeat this as often as possible throughout the day. Suddenly the microbes jump back to live now there’s both water and oxigen in abundance. Just one thing’s missing: food! So we dilute the newly energized soup and pour many buckets of corny microbes into the mulch of our very own red light district. Partytime in the future forest !

The natives have many more purposes. Sometimes we inoculate our piles of chipped canas (giant reed) with the same soup in order to bring them in a festive mood even before they enter the lines. Other times we soak dry pieces of wood overnight before we dig them into the mulchline as a kind of prefab house of the rising sun.