THE ICE STORM REARS ITS HEAD AGAIN

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A few months ago, I wrote a column in which I gave the ice storm a good sound lashing for breaking my fence.

I originally thought that today’s column would be an apology to the ice storm. Although it was a vicious storm that took out roughly 140 percent of all limbs in the area, it had provided mountains of mulch free for the taking. The way I figured it, although it had been a nasty little spell of weather and a massive inconvenience, it ultimately produced a bounty of mulch for spreading out plants, trees and the like. And then I hauled six truckloads of the free stuff and then made the horrific mistake of trying to get up out of bed the next day. The ice storm is back on my bad list. I have to admit, I was pretty excited about the mulch prospect.

A neighbor of mine has a truck, and he agreed to offer up his vehicle and labor services. When we got to the three-story high mounds, we found that the process of loading up a truck takes only a few minutes. He would back up the truck, we would spread a tarp on the bed of the truck, and we would commence to pitching mulch into the back until it was full.

Then, when we got to our final destination, we would simply drag the tarp out of the back, and the mulch would fall easily into a nice pile, awaiting its mulchly duties.

During one of the first loads, my neighbor stopped mid-pitch and said, “Uhhhhh.” I looked over and saw he was holding his pitchfork towards me and there, rather than a scoop of mulch, was part of a shoe. He made it very clear that the first leg bone would signify the end of his assistance.

At its core, the process was rather simple. But so is picking up, say, a television set. But pick up the television set over and over for the course of three hours, and you will soon feel like your arms are going to, for lack of a better phrase, be ripped from your body.

And that’s about how we were feeling after about mulch load three. One of the problems is that, once you get the mulch to its destination, you have to move it again, and no longer have the luxury of a truck bed. It is at that point that you realize mulch, while a grand idea in theory, is actually one of the most horrific ideas ever conceived by mankind. Trees were designed to live in their upright state. And if they fall, let them become homes to bunnies and spiders and moss and such. And if so many of them fall that they must be piled high in giant mulch loads, let them live as an undeterred mulch pile. Your back will thank you. So after a few loads, I decided that two loads would be more than ample for what I was planning on doing. My original plan of covering the yard six or seven feet deep in mulch had been slightly altered to include coverage of a small bed in the front yard and a little bit around my kids’ playground.

By the time we pulled the sixth load off, my neighbor summed up his desire to haul another load: “Next one’s gonna require cash.” Now, I am sure that some of you who are reading this are thinking that I am whining unnecessarily. Perhaps. But all I know is that when I woke up the next morning, my first move to get out of bed was quickly met with a lurching, groaning flop back into the bed. I clutched my back and groaned a little louder, and then offered a couple long, drawn-out wails of discomfort. At that point, I realized my wife was not going to wake up, so I just went and grabbed some pain relief. But it was not for lack of trying to garner some sympathy.

As the discomfort of being woefully out of shape fades, I am sure that I will soon be ready to spread the remainder of the mulch. And I am sure many other people will take many more truckloads than I did and not complain nearly as much. But those people are merely letting it build up inside, which is unhealthy, as any chronic complainer will tell you. Hopefully, it will be a long time before there is another ice storm. But when it happens, I am sure that the debris will again be turned into mulch, and made available for people, free for the taking. And I will have most likely forgotten the aches and pains of my first mulch go-round. And I will approach my neighbor. And he will say, “Next one’s gonna require cash.”