This morning I took a shovel and unearthed the compostable Sun Chips bag that I had buried in our compost bin in early June. (Look back at http://www.thenaturalistsnotebook.com/our-blog/the-sun-chip-composting-test for a refresher.) Supposedly the bag would fully decompose in 13 weeks in proper composting conditions.
It didn't. I'm sure our bin falls short of composting perfection, but everything in it except the Sun Chips bag seems to be rotting quite nicely. How's the bag? I would use the term "good as new," but the bag is a lot dirtier and stinkier than when I buried it. I wouldn't put it out for guests. Nevertheless, it doesn't seem to have decomposed at all, so I have reburied it and will check in again next spring.
Another follow-up: We drove to the summit of Cadillac Mountain on Saturday evening for the Acadia Night Sky Festival stargazing session. It was a memorable, if cold, experience. As we neared the top of the mountain, event volunteers asked us to turn our headlights off and use only our parking lights. That kept the event dark but made driving a little tricky. Once we parked (and there were a LOT of cars up there), we got out and marveled. The two 80-something visitors with us, Andy and Adele, said they had never in their lives seen the Milky Way so clearly and fully. We looked up with binoculars into that whitish, spiral galaxy and saw the density of stars. There are at least 200 billion of them in the Milky Way. In fact, every star we can see in any part of the sky is part of the Milky Way.
By the way, for anyone who thinks he or she is going nowhere in life, the Milky Way—and thus the Earth—is currently traveling across space at 391 miles per second, or 1.4 million miles per hour. So the next time someone accuses you of slacking off, tell him that you're actually doing everything at a million miles an hour.