It’s amazing what can happen when a dump truck drops 14 cubic yards of mulch into your driveway in late May.
Late Thursday morning, I got a dump truck full of mulch dumped across the length of our driveway. We’ve done this 4-5 times and it always makes a huge difference. I couldn’t remember how much we got last time, and turns out, I got some extra.
Thursday after work, we started transporting by wheelbarrow one load of mulch at a time. We started with the easy (and close targets) of the front beds and the circles surrounding the various trees.
We then followed step in the backyard, hitting the smaller beds and all the circles surrounding our trees.
Then there was the big target — our back bed that started out a few years after we moved into this house. We planted a bunch of little plants and a few little “sticks” with a couple of straggly and minute little roots.
Now, just a few years later, those little “sticks” are some of the largest trees around. They’ve spread and dominated the back bed to the point it’s hard to get back there.
So while the wife went to pick up the kids from school, I hacked away at the trees, trimming them up, getting rid of a lot of low-hanging branches. That took quite awhile and ended up closing out the day.
Bright and early the next morning, I was back out there. I took the day off solely with the goal of blasting through the huge pile of remaining mulch in the driveway — and that I did. Working for a straight 3.5 hours, 90% of the back bed was revitalized with a thick layer of mulch.
Amanda came home early from work. We got a quick lunch and went to finishing out the rest of the bed. Below is the before and after of our labor, not to mention the before and after of the driveway.
In the end, we had a bit of leftovers that we wheeled over to our three closest neighbors to help them spruce up their own beds. It felt good to help the neighbors a bit. Felt like a load of good karma.