Re: Honeybees and Tansy Ragwort...

> Don't really know.

Right

>the pile is running in the 155-165F range anywhere deeper than the 
> outer foot or so - which tells me it's cooking along almost perfectly

Yes that's a good compost heap.

>found a large rock - I'd estimate its volume to be a bit more
> than a basketball, though the shape was irregular - that had gotten 
> stirred into the pile. Rolled it aside, and half an hour, maybe 45 
> minutes later when I grabbed it to move it someplace useful, found that 
> it was still so hot I couldn't hold on to it with bare hands for more 
> than a few seconds - yow... TOASTY!)

Stones are great things to store heat. I read a thing once where a person
had a wall of big rounded rocks he continually doused with solar heated
water in the day. At night he stopped the circulation and the stones then
gave off heat, sounded like it worked pretty well.

> previous owner and/or contractors hired by the previous owner scraping 
> the top 18 inches or so of soil into a pile, putting down a layer of 
> large (3-6 inches) broken stone and drainage lines, adding a 6 inch 
> layer of 5/8-minus gravel on top of that, scraping the piled up soil 
> back across the area, then running out of money

This is another type of overgrazing but just as destructive you can file
it
under 'stupid ****ing white men'

Your thoughtful procedure will pay off someday. In that area with so much
rain it won't take 20 years to put things right.

-- 
CK