Sorry Philip, I'd completely forgotten this thread of mine and only just noticed your reply!
My point concerns what Adam would have noticed about the Eden soil, not observations from today. The questiosn is, would Adam have perceived "dead" organic matter and what would he have concluded.
I agree, there is often an implicit "apparent age" in YEC scenarios but mostly they stop short of "fabrication", in the sense of dead things that never were alive (supernova progenitors, fossilised life, and in this case decayed life).