Mulching - 7/18/18

Several years ago, The Husband began to make noises about taking out the boxwood shrubs in front of our house.  I didn't really want the boxwoods taken out.  They'd grown waist high and were doing a pretty good job of shading out the weeds.  Eventually, though, I relented, on the condition that HE should be in charge of keeping the weeds from growing up to the windowsills in the front of the house.  He said he would.

Fast forward to today.  The bed contained two scraggly rose bushes, a few pitiful hostas, one lonely hellebore, an ill-placed mound of creeping myrtle, an assortment of viney weeds (including poison ivy and dewberries), and about 50 little saplings.  When I walked out the front door this morning and saw that mess, I was disgusted, and decided that today would be the day I would do something about it.  After work, I stopped at the garden center and bought ten bags of mulch and some landscape fabric.

The sky was turning dark with rain clouds by the time I unloaded the mulch, and I could hear distant thunder.  Nevertheless, I put on some gloves, gathered some tools, and went to work pulling up weeds.  I dug up the hosta and the hellebore and moved them to a shadier bed in the back yard.  I cut the rose bushes back to nubs so they wouldn't rip my flesh while I worked around them.  About an hour into the job, it started to rain.  I said a bad word or two, and went in the house to start another task I'd set for today, making gazpacho with some tomatoes I'd been given. 

This gazpacho recipe called for fresh, chopped tomatoes, onions, red bell pepper, cucumbers, garlic, vinegar, and tomato juice.  I didn't have any tomato juice, but I had enough tomatoes to make juice, and by the time the juice tomatoes finished cooking, the rain had stopped, and I went back outside to work.

It was muddy, muggy work.  Mosquitoes were singing around my sweat-soaked head.  Horseflies buzzed me.  I soldiered on, and just about the time I laid down the last piece of landscape fabric, The Husband came home from work.  He seemed duly impressed with my progress.  He went inside, changed into shorts and a t-shirt, and came back out on the front porch.

By then, I was putting down the first bag of mulch and was anticipating having some help with the rest.  But no.  HE JUST STOOD THERE AND WATCHED while I did the other 9 bags. 

I am going to poison his dinner tomorrow night.