But when you order 4 cubic yards of mulch and have it dumped in the street in front of your house, it begs for an all-hands-on-deck kind of weekend. We were all asleep when the doorbell rang around 9 a.m. to announce the mulch delivery. I'd told Jeff I was going to order it, but he didn't realize it was happening as quickly as it did. I got dressed and started working on the pile, which took up about half a lane of the road and peaked at about 4.5 feet.
I gave her some options and she decided to clean up the weeds on the non-bed side of the rocks that hold in a flower bed that stretches from the street to the front stoop and over to the neighbor's wall. When she finished with that, she decided the lilies against the wall needed raking.
I would have been content to put mulch on top of the leaves, but neither Ali nor Jeff agreed.
All of that extra ambition resulted in about eight bags of yard waste, a good 12 hours of outside work this weekend and a few moans and groans along the way.
My back was complaining as I carefully placed mulch around my day lilies and it was then I remembered that these plants push themselves through the hard ground every year. A little bit of mulch isn't going to top them from poking through. After that, I was a little less gently.
On Saturday, with about one yard of mulch down, I must have been looking depressed. A neighbor came by and called out, "Just think about what it'll look like when you're done. You're almost there!"
Right. She was taking a stroll. I was leaving skin cells on my shovel handle.
About halfway through, Jeff reminded us it was time to head down to 450 North Brewing Co. He had some newly released beer on order, and Ali and I were going for the pizza and BBQ. It's an hour south of us but, man. So worth the trip.It was drive-through service for both and we ate in the car before heading back home for more yard work. Our friends Eric and Tracy hired Ali to mow their yard weekly until their Broad Ripple house is sold. Hopefully they find another one that's better suited for them but still close to us.
"I could mow three or four yards after that," Ali declared after snarfing down her sandwich and a good portion of her fries.
Once home, Ali headed up to her paid gig, Jeff left to deliver beer to friends -- in a socially distanced way, of course -- and it was back to the mulch pile for me. Jeff got back fairly quickly and unearthed more leaves. We surrendered around 6 and put a tarp over the mulch.
It will be hard to get them back in the yard after this weekend of hard labor. Which is fine. It's mostly my domain anyway. And I need them to rest up for fall when the rakes, bags and blower will be in need again.
She had just mentioned to her boyfriend that she loved the smell of mulch. "It makes me think of Spring and my mom doing yard work," she told him. Notice she didn't say, "My mom and me doing yard work."Jason disagreed. A summer of Boy Scout fundraiser apparently had ended with mulch in his pores. It took months to get the smell out of his nose, he said.
It's been quite a week of Working From Home for all three of us. I'm grateful that I don't have one or more elementary or high school kids who have to finish their years e-learning. I'm more grateful that Alison has maintained her focus on her Purdue coursework.
She's hard core man and has given me "the hand" as Lynda and Amy would call it more than once. I'd invite her on a walk when I needed to get out of my chair. "Sorry, I'm working," she'd say.
I complimented her on her focus one evening after we'd all packed in the work day. "Yeah, how does it feel?" she asked with a grin.
"Huh?" I asked.
She claims there many, many times when she was younger that she'd asked to do something and I'd tell her that I was working but we'd get to it when I was done. It's probably true. Hopefully we did actually get to whatever it was she wanted. I suspect I don't score 100 percent on that.
One early evening, Ali was still working out some kind of complicated equation and Jeff and I took a walk around the neighborhood. We discovered the tiny, walk-up/drive-up Dairy Queen near us had 16 Dilly Bars on sale for $12.99. We didn't think we could get them home without melting, but we were tempted.
On Friday, we caught Ali on a light day, got out a beer backpack, filled it with ice packs and all three of us trekked over to see if the sale was still on. I don't know why they're so overstocked on Dilly bars, but it seemed wrong not to help them out.
We each had a frozen treat on the walk home, which took us by Indy Tacos, which had a huge sign out front reminding passersby that they were open for take-out.
That night we feasted like kings as we watched more of the Tiger King on Netflix. I blew through it during my basement confinement, but there are things I missed. And it's fun to hear their reaction.
In other news of note, Ali came out of her bathroom chortling to her father. "Dad! Dad! It finally happened. It finally happened!"
While some fathers might have been nervous about what had happened in there, the Captain was all ears.
"What? What?" he asked.
"We finally ran out of that awful Scott toilet paper and I have real toilet paper again," she exclaimed.
I hadn't told him that I'd rewarded her for her devotion to her studies. He assumed, however, that it was yet another sign that I love Ali more than I love him.
"Well your mother must have put all the Scot in our bathroom because we still have three more rolls of that one-ply, half-ply stuff in there," he groused.
I thought about reminding him that in this Covid-19 world, there are lots of people who would loooooo-ooooove to have his Scott tissue. But I was afraid he'd go find them.
Anyway, the yard looks better than it has for years. Jeff and I are pounding Naproxen, and office work isn't at all unappealing. Which is good because we all have a lot of it -- and we're grateful for it given the numbers of unemployment in this Covid-19 world.
Hope you're all coping as well or better than we are. Stay physically distanced but virtually social. Wash your hands and find a fun mask to wear if you have to go out around people. We can get through this. Think about how hard it must for a flower to push through hard earth to reach the sunlight.That takes a lot of patience, time and perseverance. And when that hard work is over, there's another bit of beauty in the world.
Happy spring, everyone!
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