I refer, of course, not to the famous occasion in 1521 when Martin Luther was summoned by Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, to account for his weird beliefs at a meeting (or "diet") at the town of Worms in the Rhineland-Palatinate. Instead, it is of those marvelous creatures who eat my garbage that I sing.

I have just gotten another three pounds of these animate waste disposal units, and have placed them in my two worm bins. Even though I suppose I am holding animals captive, I'm giving them lots of fruit skins, vegetable cuttings, and decaying plant matter (which in turn are kept out of the landfills) and, now that the weather has turned cold, I've placed a tarpaulin over the worms' habitat to protect them from the icy blasts. Call me a sentimental welfarist, why don't you?

The fact that I can have two worm bins, as well as a tumbler composter and a compost hoop is because I'm now blessed with a garden. I tried to compost in my apartment a few years ago, and found to my horror that I kept on getting fruit flies. Despite all my best efforts to make the bin inhospitable to them, they would emerge from nowhere, and soon our house was filled with dying animals, which is not what you want when you're a vegan.

In about two weeks, my original worm castings will be ready, as the red wigglers move from one level of the bin to another. I'll put this natural fertilizer on the soil, and be able, in a very small way, to give a bit back to the earth after all that I've taken out.