Farm fresh

Something you should know about our family is that we are simultaneously house-proud and cheap. This unique combination makes for oft interesting approaches to home maintenance and home improvement.

Take, for example, when we had a dripping faucet in the bathroom. Most people might take inventory of the situation, acknowledge that they are not plumbing experts, and turn over the responsibility of fixing said leak to one who knows what the hell they are doing. Or, you could be like Husband and take matters into your own hands.

Once there was a gaping hole in the dining room wall, I failed to see how that would fix the leak in the bathroom. It might surprise you to learn that it didn’t. What it did do, however, was create a whole lot of dust and a mess I had the pleasure of cleaning up. It also spurred a desperate phone call to a real plumber. Money-saved: minimal. Pain-in-the-ass created: massive. (BTW, we still have not patched the wall.)

With such mindset plaguing Team M’s decision making, this weekend we decided to spruce up the yard. The weather’s been beautiful and we decided it was high time for some overdue weeding and pruning. And when you get lazy and just don’t want to weed anymore, nothing fixes up a yard like mulch.

Again, in a cost-saving measure, Husband managed to find a place in the city where you can get mulch for free. Say good bye to paying huge prices for the tidy bags from the Home Depot—just drive your jalopy up to this green waste yard and you too can get bins full of the brown gold for nothing. That you aren’t quite sure what exactly went into the chipper to produce the mulch is just part of the excitement.

Now we’ve used this place many times in the past…but something went afoul with this weekend’s mulch run. This batch boasted an odor that is 10% recycled wood and about 90% manure. I’ve got to think that compostable diapers like I use on the Mighty Midget must make up a large percentage of what was brought home.

“Mom, what is that smell? It smells like Papa’s ranch.”

“That’s the smell of nature, baby.”

“Nature smells like poo.”

“Enough potty talk. Maybe if you were being more helpful in spreading mulch around the garden you’d be less worried about what it smells like.”

Well, I’ll tell you, there is nothing more exciting to a three-year-old boy than the prospect of wielding a metal shovel twice his size (that could also serve as a weapon) while he digs in a substance smelling like cow pies. Middle Man was thrilled and tucked in, digging away like a dog with a bone. Even the Might Midget got in on the action. Now, clearly I didn’t expect her to use a shovel, so I put her little hands to work with a garden trowel and told her to get the mulch in between all the plants I didn’t want to bend down to deal with. BMoC was the only one sounding off about child labor laws and how he’d rather be playing with his friends up the street.

After a while, no one could even really smell the original offending odor. I figured that our free mulch had simply needed airing out. So once we’d successfully buried all the weeds I didn’t have the energy to unearth we headed inside, washed our labor off, and grabbed cool drinks. But when I later headed back out to admire all our hard work, that same cow-pie smell hit me like a bag of shit in the face.

“Holy... Now our house is surrounded by the smell of crap.”

This was three days ago. And quite frankly I’m surprised that the mailman is even dropping off the post. For what it’s worth, I’d recommend staying off our street for the foreseeable future.