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Overcoming mulch mountain
I’m not really sure why, at 50 years old, I haven’t yet developed the skill to duck when the Stupid Stick swings in my direction. No matter how I try, I can’t do things within reason.
Gotta go big- that’s me- no matter what. And so, that explains why I ended up with a Mt. Everest of mulch yesterday instead of a few sensible bags of mulch like any other reasonable human being. With the billion tons of mulch on the back of the truck, I was forced to drive four miles an hour. Increasing my speed caused mulch to blow off. And I’m way too much of a tightwad to lose any of my purchase to the breeze. Let me just add here that I also managed to get the mulch on the hottest day in American history.
More stress was added when the farmer reminded me that he needed his truck back by morning- minus the mulch glob on the back. At first, I daintily shoveled around the half-dead flowers as professionally as possible. But thirty minutes into the task, I was sweating like a hog. I was sick of mulch. I stopped shoveling nicely and started dumping the stuff then spreading it (kind of) with my bare foot. Four hours later, only half of the mulch mountain had disappeared.
“Every time I turn my head, the mulch is reproducing,” I moaned as I stuck the shovel back into the endless mass.
“Is there a problem?” my husband asked from the back door.
“Nope,” I lied, since I would do anything to avoid telling him I was over my head.
“Do you need help?” he asked.
“Nope,” I lied, since I’d rather shovel ‘til my arms fall off than admit to the farmer that I got a little overzealous.
By supper time, I had bonked myself in the left eye with the handle of the shovel, run over the clippers with the four-wheeler and twisted my ankle when I jumped off the tailgate. Sometime after 9 p.m., the truck bed was finally empty. I hobbled into the house with the posture of a jumbo shrimp. Tear stains were evident on my mulchy face.
“Everything ok?” the farmer asked.
“Yep,” I lied.
“Never saw such a hard-headed woman,” he said.
“Bet not,” I said.
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