Mulch madness.

It was the mulch that did it.

Before we moved to the suburbs, I thought gardening was a hobby for well-mannered senior citizens who wore long gloves and big floppy hats and pruned a bit each morning as they hummed their favorite oldies. I thought keeping up a yard meant mowing and watering. The End. I thought picking out lovely plants and keeping them in good shape just meant going to the nursery, saying "I'll take those, those, and those," and then they'd magically show up in our yard, and because I'm a spunky sort who doesn't need things done for me, nossir, I'd plunk them into neat holes that wouldn't be any problem to dig. Maybe I'd make Scott dig them, if the holes were large.

I was wrong on all these counts, of course. Planting and gardening involves science and heavy lifting. It involves endless weeding and finding out that your yard is composed of clay and unexpectedly large rocks. It means pulling muscles you never knew you had. Gardening is not for sissies. Those old people who like to garden? I wouldn't mess with them if you paid me, now. Who knows what they could do with a shovel?

But the mulch, damn it, the mulch was too much. I knew about mulch and its importance, vaguely, so the first time I planted some things I came home with a couple of bags of mulch—which were surprisingly heavy! Huh!—and proceeded to pull every muscle in my body dumping them out all over the garden bed, my feet, and most of my legs. I raked the mulch around, and then saw how little of the ground I had covered. And I wept.

It turns out, and I know you know this and you're shaking your head at what an idiot I am, you need truckfuls of mulch. You need to visit Mulch Planet, and fight the natives until they surrender or die, and then denude their Mulch Mountains and Valleys, and transport all that mulch directly to your backyard, and maybe that would be enough. So much mulch, you need.

And the mulch doesn't stay. It goes. And then you need MORE MULCH.

A sane person would say, well, we could have hired a landscaping company to do the lawn upkeep and the mulching for us. That would have been the sane, sensible thing to do, but it would also be the thing to do if we had any cash with which to do that. Sadly, if we were to keep our yard looking halfway decent, we'd have to perform the upkeep ourselves.

I thought I'd get used to the fertilizing, the pruning, and of course the mulching. But I never did. I'm sorry to say this, yard, but now I dislike you. I see you and you're just a nagging reminder of all that I need to do, all that I haven't done, or the half-assed job that I did do just to make myself feel better. And now that I've mulched everything in the front yard that required mulching and I can't lift my arms without screaming, I am officially over having a yard. I want to move to a magical place where I'm only responsible for the inside of my home. Where if I feel any guilt, it's just because I haven't used the vacuum cleaner in a week.

Comments

[Heidi]

Dude! You all need to get some rubber mulch! It's made from chopped up old tires but looks like mulch. And it's rubber so it lasts for years.

Disclaimer: I am not a home owner and I have not used rubber mulch, it just seems like it'd be so much easier. Also, I used to know a family who owned a rubber mulch business, which is how I even know about it.

[ozma]

I'm always so charmed by your perfectionism. Maybe it's just a little streak that comes out when you write here--I am making no claims on your deep inner self. But I remember when you washed the floors in your house until the water was clear. No doubt this is all projection because I am a perfectionist and my way of dealing with this is to be a complete slacker. Seriously, there are plastic bags in my yard and I haven't even bothered to go pick them out of the weeds.

It's so freeing just to say screw it if you are a perfectionist. Addictive even. I don't recommend it, you'll be doing it all the time and then one day you'll look at your life and recoil in horror. It's better to keep mulching. If there weren't people out there mulching, there'd be so much less beauty and we'd be up to our ears in weeds and trash. In my neighborhood, I free ride on the mulching of others.

So what I mean to say is: Thank you for mulching. Someone's got to do it. It's a noble cause.

[ozma]

Doh! Dumbest comment ever. I forgot you were selling your house.

Sorry. In recompense, I will perform some magic juju or something for a quick sale!

Anyway, I hope you are holding up OK. And that your house sells in a flash. Famous blogger house!

[Ellen]

Here we can have mulch delivered by the county pretty cheap. You can get a DUMP TRUCK (yes, a real construction-sized dump truck) of mulch for $25. They DUMP it half on your yard and half in the street and you have a couple of days to move it off the street. Nothing motivates you faster than the threat of rain. Wet mulch is extremely heavy. If you're a wuss, you can get a half-dump truck for $12.50.

[Sassy]

Exactly. Freaking exactly. Well put. Down with mulch... so to speak.

[Mauigirl]

As you well know, my carefully planted garden, by the time early autumn - or even late summer - arrives, has turned into a jungle. It is what it is. You can't do everything. But I understand the feeling of guilt - I do feel bad that it looks like a jungle. But not quite bad enough to go weed when it's going to snow soon...

[Jerri Ann]

I would prefer to be shot than bother with lawn "stuff". My cousin has a landscaping business and he stays all over me about our "yard". We don't have a lawn, we have a "yard" that was a pasture with cows in it just a few months before our house was put here...so er...no, I hate it!

[Malita]

I literally had to schedule a massage after a weekend of mulching and gardening - a house built on Austin limestone is a nightmare indeed - but oddly enough I love the physical torture

[jackie]

i could not agree more. i wanted a yard. now i hate the yard. i still like the IDEA of the yard, but who's got time for all that mess?

also, if you dig out some of the clay and rocks and random detritus from your flower bed to add some real soil in there so that things MIGHT grow, what do you do with all the leftover dirt? i still don't know...