Infrequent poster here.

The city in which I live had a one-day composter sale/fundraiser today, and I
decided to go pick one up ($20C, reportedly $80 value). No one with a car being
available, I took the train up to the mall parking lot, intending to haul it
back with my luggage rack. My route back to my house took me through a
quasi-upper income bracket neighborhood, and along one street which had several
trailers pulled up. Plainly a movie or tv shoot. It was at this point that my
bungee cord decided to come loose, sending all the parts of my composter onto
the street. Just as I had everything under control again, this Brit pops out of
one of the parked cars with his walkie talkie and asks if I needed any help. I
told him everything was OK, whereupon he proceeded to tell me that composting
doesn't work. You have to add too much bone meal for it to be cost effective,
he said.

I don't know why complete strangers feel compelled to lecture me about such
things.

Now I didn't think much about this at the time, being more concerned about
getting my composter down the hill on the luggage rack, and I figured he didn't
need any compost anyway, since he probably just had to go talk to his flowers
to provide them with a reliable source of bull manure. On reflection I realized
that it was probably added to keep the compost from becoming too acidic, even
though he talked about the bone meal as if it were a starter. This isn't a
problem where I live in Calgary, because the soil tends to be too alkaline.
Elsewhere, it might be common practise. Is it?

Dora