At the beginning of fall I start turning over my mulch pile every day because soon the leaves will start dropping everywhere and I'll have enough to start a new pile. I'm working with a fairly limited space, maybe 3'x3', tucked in a back corner of the yard, so I try to get the mulch at least three quarters of the way broken down so I can lay it down somewhere else and know it will be mosty be soil by the next spring season. Watching the pile turn over each time with a but more humus, seeing the ground beetles and woodlice emerge afterwards and smelling that rich scent of good earth. I waited so many years to have access to a tiny bit of ground, and while I've played around with growing crops it still involves buying some premade soil, so having an established mulch pile, well that is a blessing. I may not be an engineer creating spacecraft or building bridges but I can do something to balance that by making soil.