Old Lady Bowman's



worm poop


In the summer, kids would always walk over to Old Lady Bowman's house on their way to the creek. That's because she had this piece of old carpet at the end of her tomato row.
Every day she'd put all the grounds from Old Man Bowman's coffee under there, egg shells and all. That's why they was the fattest red wigglers around. Before the winter when everything stopped, Old Lady Bowman brought them worms indoors. She'd take and put
them into this wash tub in the basement where their root cellar was.
By spring all them worms would be gone and there'd just be this fluffy black powder that smelled like the ground under the leaves in the woodlot. Them coffee grounds and eggshells would be rich fertilizer for the year's tomato plants and carrot seeding. She even put them on that big spider plant in the parlor and on her geraniums.
She called them worm castings.
The summer kids called them worm poop