Last fall I prepared a tiny garden in my front yard in which to plant this spring. I didn’t mean for my little patch of earth to be tiny; I’d meant it to be manageable so that I, a beginning gardener, wouldn’t feel too overwhelmed.

In November 2018, Mike O’Donnell, a teacher at North County High School, led a field trip to the Baltimore Composting Collective. He was filling in for a friend of his and didn’t realize that the trip would have such an impact on his life.