Back on the Chain Gang
The house has cleared out of the holiday visitors and tomorrow is the start of the last week of the year for 2021. New Years Day will be next Saturday and my agenda consists of one massage on Wednesday and that’s it. We don’t leave for Florida until the end of the following week, so there isn’t even much to prepare for just yet. My last semester course ended, has been graded and all grades posted. I don’t start my next course for five weeks and while I still have some3 preparations to make by virtue of some reading assignment downloads and class notes to prepare, I have a pretty good bead on the course with a completed syllabus and guest speakers already lined up. I have only one active expert witness case on the books right now and while I have a minor rewrite of my case report outline to prepare this week, that is only a handful of hours of work to be done and I have a good handle on what is needed. That means that what is left for my gaping agenda is the hauling of a good deal of mulch down to the lower hillside with the help of my new power wheelbarrow. I figure I will get a few superbags of bark mulch delivered this week and that will finish off all the mulching I have to do for some time. This is sweaty and tedious work, but it is not particularly hard work other than the up and down of the hillside, and I figure that is where the mulch wagon comes in handy.
I could have a load of mulch delivered and just dumped at the roadside (thereby saving $200-300 which could be allocated to a laborer to do the hard and sweaty work of hauling and spreading the mulch, but why would I deprive myself of the exercise since I have plenty of time on my hands? That is what it has come down to for me and I’m not so sure it isn’t for the best. I am not ready to sit on the porch or stare out the window just yet and I tend to believe that if I am able to pace myself to my liking, doing physical yard work, what I am choosing to call chain gang work (I can’t help but think about Cool Hand Luke when I say that), may well be my highest and best use of my time these days. I spend about as much time on keeping up on the news and markets, writing stories and even ghost-writing books, and watching movies and interesting series as I can handle. And that still leaves me a decent eight hours or so per day to do some sort of work. If I had more expert witness work I imagine I would do that for a while, but I think I am maxed out on teaching and one course per semester may be my natural limit. So that means that on a six-day week I probably have 25-30 hours for physical chain gang work. Getting in help when specific skills are needed or the work is back-breaking is fine. But mulch spreading is pretty tame and with my new contraption, well within my boundaries.
I currently have two other projects beyond mulching to be done as well. I have three Palo Verde trees sitting out there awaiting planting. I generally leave planting for Joventino, who will be back here on the 5th of January, but I have bought a new pick, so I may try my hand at digging the hole for one of the trees and try to plant it myself. That would be a first of late, not that I haven’t done that a few times in my youth. I also have a five pound bag of wildflower seed (California Native Mix) that I could plant by scratching up the dirt in the wildflower beds and laying in some blend of seed and sand as is recommended in the gardener’s wildflower guide. Today I “planted” a new birdhouse given to me by my son Roger by buying a 3/4” threaded pipe and screw flange. the biggest challenge was sinking the damn pipe into the ground far enough since the ground in the garden is rock-hard. What the hand sledge couldn’t do, I was able to accomplish by buying a pipe pounder, which is a simple yet ingenious device specifically designed to whack the shit out of pipes to get them into the ground for fence posts. It worked like a charm and the bird house is not planted and secure.
This past week has been a very wet week, as wet as any week I have seen since moving to San Diego. The good news is that the hillside is still in tact and nothing terrible in terms of water or erosion damage occurred to wither the building or the property at large. The bad news is that some of my cacti and drought-resistant plants are looking a bit soggy and floppy since they tend to prefer a more arid climate. The newly planted prickly pear cacti seem particularly hard-hit and they are just laying flat on the ground looking quite pitiful. I can’t tell, for instance with Bougainvillea plants whether they are just cycling new leaves and growth or whether they have become hopelessly waterlogged. Only time will tell. The rest seem fine though what I had thought was full mulch ground cover now looks more sparse than I want it to, so mulch-ho!
Mulching is dry repetitive work that anyone can do if you have a wheelbarrow of some sort and a shovel. I use a rake to spread it, but that is really quite optional since bark mulch can be spread and evened out by hand or by foot. Load, transport to site, dump, spread, repeat. There is a rhythm to it and there is some sense of accomplishment since coverage mounts and one can sit and see fresh mulch beds in no time at all. It’s the hillside and the narrow paths that must be navigated with whatever wheelbarrow you care to use, including the new power rig, that make the work harder than I wish it were. There is clearly a part of me that wants to hire out this work, but my open dance card forbids me from doing so. I would feel particularly decadent to have bought the power cart and then just speed up the laborers’ work for the trouble of having bought it.
I currently have 10 cubic feet of bagged bark mulch, so tomorrow I will buy either 12 or 24 more bags (24-48 cubic feet) and bring them here in the Tesla in one or two trips depending on what the delivery schedule looks like this week for a bulk shipment of some 5-6 yards (135-160 cubic feet). If I can get it delivered by Wednesday I think I can finish it up this week and then leave all the planting, weeding and pruning to Joventino the week after.
I am certain that if Joventino heard all of this musing by me he would think it was the funniest damn thing he ever heard. I might do as much work in a week (only if I really apply myself) as Joventino does in a day. And he does it every day at least 6 or 7 days a week and has no particular expectation of doing anything but that for many years yet to come. His father, Benito, is still out there doing it when he comes back from Mexico to fill in for Joventino. Someone like me thinks about, plans out, prepares and then does the work with many rest breaks and very mild pacing. It is chain gang work to me, as I said. To Joventino it is very different. To him it isn’t chain gang work, it is life. It is a better life than he would otherwise have south of the border and it is a chance for a better life for him and his family whether he stays here or takes himself back to Mexico for his retirement. Where my retirement has put me on the chain gang, his retirement will probably put him on the porch for a well-earned rest. Maybe everyone has chain gang time to put in and we are just different in when we choose to be back on the chain gang.