Day 45

Today the kids and I went in search of mulch.   The actual purpose of mulch is to enrich the soil, prevent the evaporation of moisture and inhibit growth of moisture. (Thank you, dictionary.com).  It’s a good thing, and what better use of our resources that to grind up organic material and reuse it.  But, somewhere in the not very distant past, it went from a very simple and organic soil amendment, to home owner’s association couture.

Wandering the aisles of Lowes, you  can pick from bags of cedar, pine, hardwood,  and even DYED mulch.  OK,  let’s stop for a moment, how absurd it is to buy mulch that has been dyed?  It would be one thing if they dyed it chartreuse or lilac; but they dye it brown–AGAIN.  I guess for those who want REALLY brown mulch, or maybe it’s going gray.

Plus, It’s packaged in non-compostable, not degradable plastic bags to transport your organic material.   Although, you can also get a load of mulch delivered and/or pick it up in a truck. Even the minimum will often leave me with a pile of leftover decaying matter on my driveway for several weeks until I put it on Freecycle*.  My neighbors always love that.

Anyway, I found  through our The Simple Year project  that there are all kinds of avenues for free mulch around the country, sans packaging (once again, I did an exhaustive 4 minute internet search)  In my city, the parks and rec, provides it.  In Del Rio, Texas it was available on the Air Force Base.  In my hometown, Indianapolis, the utility company offers it.

So, today the kids and I went in search of the illusive free mulch.  And there it was.

This sign has a handy arrow to direct people to the mulch pile that was literally two feet away.

Much like public restrooms, they had the pile conveniently labeled “Public Mulch Pile”.  At first I thought this was a bit of overkill until I looked across the street to see the “Private Mulch Pile”.  The  finely shredded, aesthetically pleasing top shelf of mulch.   I have to admit I was a little envious.

As it happens, there was a somewhat dodgy city worker standing about, and with some trepidation, I asked about the “special stash. “  Shame on me for judging a book by his cover, or in this case, an environmentalist by his prison tats.  That man actually had PASSION for the art of the shredded plant material.

I stood them for some time with a fixed smile on my face while he positively gushed about the methods of making mulch, where it originated, the various machines they used, etc… I had no idea.

As it turns out, the city shreds tree limbs and mixes them with pallets they grind from the area Army base to make the ground cover for its park playgrounds.  You know, just when I think the government is completely wasteful, I run into something like this where a couple of agencies manage to work together to produce something that seems to make sense .  Maybe we are taking baby steps as a society?

So, we have our “Public Mulch” now and the kids had a fine time playing king of the mulch.

Nothing better than a little child labor

*If you didn’t get a chance to read about Freecycle, check my post out here