Compost is always a matter of sorrow, the gardener said, shaking his head over the undigested melon peels which the worms refused to devour. The wrong temperature, the wrong humidity, and it turns into a mess of fermentation that bears no wine, no matter how much one may whine about it. Gardening is an art, after all, as much as it is an exercise in mud, and really millipedes are not 'bugs' but the most ancient form of crustacean, an older form than anything else we are likely to encounter. There is a moral in this story somewhere, but, alas, you will not find it.

a mess of bindweed