Humping Mulch
If you read my stories every day you can’t help but notice that one day I may talk about cerebral issues that seem important to me, whether they are psychological, economic, social or political. The next day I may well write about my aching back and how I injured myself trying to do something on my hillside that was beyond my natural abilities, as they exist in my advancing age. It was Rene Descartes, the French philosopher, scientist and mathematician of the Seventeenth Century who first noted the balancing act between things of the mind and things of the body. This thinking took place in a time when religion played a big part of everyone’s consciousness, probably because there was growing awareness of all the things we did not understand about the world and felt we needed to fill the gaps somehow. Descartes addressed the separateness of mind and body by observing that one did not exist in space and the other did, therefore they had very little to do with one another since they could not really act upon one another due t this displacement. This analysis caused quite a stir and drew lots of opposing views. I have very little interest in philosophy per se, but what I do know is that I seem to need to split my time doing things of both the mind and the body. I read, I write and I teach to feed my mind, and I think its fair to suggest that over time I am trending to a larger and larger portion of those activities on my dance card. That undoubtedly goes hand in hand with increasing sedentary nature. I know that motion is the best lotion and all that, but I do need to sit more and more and the weight of my world (maybe that’s the world of my weight?) slow me down. But none of that stops me from going out there into the garden in the morning with the best intentions to move the mountain.
This garden on this hilltop is my Garden of Eden except with little or no religious connotations. The hilltop is spiritual, just not religious. I’m thinking maybe Descartes needed to spend more time in his garden to appreciate the connectedness between mind and body. When I work hard in my garden, my spirits are uplifted and that seems like a kinda connection to me. When I think about and write about my gardening, it drives me to want to get up in the morning and get at the next project. That too feels pretty connected too.
Yesterday was Joventino day in the garden. Joventino is my gardening idol. He is a Mexican (immigration status unknown, but he’s been here a long time though he speaks very little English) and about 50 years old. I’m guessing he has 0% body fat because he gets here at 7am and works hard, with perhaps a 30 minute break for lunch, until he leaves at 5pm or later. During that 10 hours he is constantly on the move, but at a regulated and unhurried pace. He pretty much covers my entire 2.5 acres in terms of routine maintenance and clean-up, and also does whatever special assignments I give him for the day. He comes one day every three weeks and I do everything else in between. I occasionally hire other day laborers for particular projects, especially if they involve lots of heavy lifting and moving things down the hillside. Mulch is one of those activities since it usually involves a great volume of the stuff and many wheelbarrows worth of hauling to get it where it needs to go. The spreading out of mulch is no big feat, but it does have to be done and it too can get tiring, especially on a hillside or another awkward spot (say, like in the middle of prickly cacti or in dense vegetation where snakes hang out).
I am in the middle of a spring gardening binge right now for some reason. Maybe its the wether finally getting nice or maybe I’m just bored and want something physical to do (mind and body balance, remember). I am systematically going all through my property and the various gardens and touching up anything that needs it. And the thing about gardening for me is that one fix leads to another fix and so on and so on. Having installed my “challenge” garden last weekend and then adding a bit to it early this week, I have prepared the cactus knoll for the “Coyote Gold” gravel I have purchased to put down instead of mulch. Once I decided to order a superbag of gravel, the $150 delivery fee induces me to add on other things I might need as well. I added a superbag of stabilized decomposed granite to freshen up all my pathways (its been a hard erosion winter). I added a superbag of bark mulch for several areas down by the front play area that I am cleaning up due to old and “leggy” succulents that I am removing. Mulch NEVER goes as far as you think it will. And, I bought 500 pounds of small river rock pebbles to supplement a few areas of my pea gravel paths. It was all supposed to come yesterday afternoon and my plan was to have Joventino at least spread the mulch superbag around the areas that he had cleaned out for me near the play area.
Joventino placed the new big blue pot in the middle of the newly cleared area as I asked. He also planted the desert yucca into that pot that I had chosen. But when 5pm rolled around and there was no mulch delivery, I told Joventino to go home and that I would take care of it. He was hesitant, but his English is not good enough to argue with me, so, after cleaning all the hardscape surfaces with his power blower, he begrudgingly went home. Naturally, the driver arrived just after 5pm and I had him drop the mulch at the bottom of the driveway and the rest up at the top of the driveway.
I thought about leaving all of the superbags for the two day laborers I have hired for Saturday. The idea was to have them spread the gravel on the cactus knoll and the DG on the lower pathways. It concerned me to overburden them and end up with a job half done. So, this morning, the first really warm day of the year (strange as that sounds for here in San Diego), I donned my work shorts and t-shirt and went to work with a shovel and my power cart. It took most of the morning, but I moved the entire superbag of 40.5 cubic feet of bark mulch onto the three areas that I planned to cover. It gave me a new appreciation for what Joventino does every day of his working life, which is six days a week of ten hour days. It has also given me some understanding of what I can expect of my two day laborers this Saturday. In the mean time, I am already feeling my shoulder this evening from humping the mulch shovel for several hours of hard labor.
I spent the afternoon in the hot tub, but not before watering all of my new plants and collecting a bucket of succulent cuttings to plant amongst the fields of blue chalk stick succulents where the gaps can stand to be filled with some contrasting succulents. I have tree aeoniums, elephant bush and some extremely special fan aloe. When I was at Waterwise Botanicals the other day I notices that small cuttings of fan aloe were going for $34 apiece. Given that I have three fully-grown fan aloe trees (6’x8’ more or less), I figure I have about $50k of fan aloe cuttings if I wanted to break up these impressive trees (which I do not). I will let my shoulder rest tomorrow, but I will be ready with my calloused succulent cuttings on Saturday morning and that way I will be able to spend the morning near where the day laborers will be working, but staying productively busy at the same time. That will be fine. Anything beats humping mulch.