Much Mulch

This was the big weekend to mulch the back slope. When karin put the dimensions for our slope into a mulch calculator and got an answer of 30 cubic yards of mulch, we almost laughed out loud. That is a lot of mulch. Imagine a rectangle 9 feet wide and 9 stories tall being dropped into your yard.  A rectangle weighing between 15,000 and 24,000 pounds. Does it make your back hurt?

We started preparing for things on Friday by staking down some big 12 X 16 tarps to make a ramp from the top of our driveway down to the lower yard.  The hope was that most of the mulch would just slide on down.

Unfortunately, the first dump truck containing 15 yards of mulch was too much for the hill and it got kind of "backed up." Luckily we did not schedule both dump trucks to come at the same time - we knew we had until about 2:00 to make room for the next set of 15 yards o' mulch.

Video

We figured this would be an all weekend affair so we had drinks, games for the kids, beverages, and snacks out by the mulch pile to try and keep the kids busy. Turns out when you have a giant pile of mulch and sharp tools around, the kids are more than happy to play in the dirt.

Well, when we broke for lunch at 1:30 we had pretty much made it through the first 15 yards and it looked really good, but the slope only looked about 40% complete so we were a bit nervous that 30 yards of mulch was not enough... Below is the before and after of the first part of the slope.

Seeing the virtually empty tarp felt so good. But knowing that some mean truck driver was on his way to take us back to the starting point was really depressing. It felt a little bit like torture....self inflicted torture. We told the kids earlier in the day that earlier in the week we had to decide to either go to Disney or buy a whole mess a mulch - we explained that they cost about the same. I expected to get poked by a pitchfork but the kids were actually quite cool with it :) See the slope at 1:30 and then again at 1:45

Fortunately after lunch our neighbor and good friend Jon came over and offered his help. He stuck it out with us till 7:00 PM when we FINALLY finished up. I don't remember ever being that tired before in my life. The entire day was spent with heavy loads on steep angles or trying to drag tarps of mulch down hills...it was really exhausting. Our toenails really hurt b/c on all the hills your feet tended to slide into the fronts of your shoes.  Mulch got everywhere...in our pockets, in my blackberry charge port, on the carpet, in Sage's crib?!Just glad it is done.