After a relatively uneventful Friday night, it's safe to say Saturday absolutely kicked my butt. I had zero misconceptions that Saturday this was going to be a lazy weekend. I had a list of things that have been piling up for a while, and given the fact that we are going to be busy with other things every weekend through the rest of May, this was my one chance to get things done.
What I didn't expect, was that Saturday was going to be a pretty much non-stop marathon of manual labor that would leave me limping around like an arthritic old man for the rest of the weekend. It's a bit funny how things that used to be fairly easy get harder and harder the older I get.
I got started bright and early in the morning by heading to one of the local landscape suppliers to pick up two cubic yards of mulch. It had been a couple of years since we refreshed the mulch in our back beds, so I knew it was time to get that done. I was a bit concerned about my regular place being open since earlier in the week there was a brush fire that spread to some of their mulch piles. My fear was that they either wouldn't have what I need or they would be closed.
I was happy to find neither of those things were true. I paid my $75 inside the office and then pulled my truck around to wait for them to dump the mulch into the bed. People always talk about how it seems like everyone in the US has a truck, but honestly, there are two types of truck owners in the US. The first is people like me who actually use their truck as a truck, it gets muddy, and dirty, we fill it with stuff, we use it to haul stuff, we put it through the paces because it is a truck.
Then there are those who own a truck just to say they own a truck. Sure, they might pull a boat with it, but other than that, it sits around pristine and never gets put to the test. Usually you can pick these folks out because they have the absolute highest level trim package on their truck (like Denali), or it's all lifted on ridiculously stupid looking tires like they are some Big Foot wanna be.
(That's just my opinion anyway)
There is no mistake my truck is a work truck. It already had some dents in it when I bought it used, and honestly, I was okay with that. It made it hurt a little less when I eventually put some dents and scratches on it of my own. I slowly drove the couple of miles or so home with my load of mulch and backed into the driveway to get ready to spread it.
As you can see, I first had to do a bit of weeding before I was ready to throw down the new mulch. The old mulch was getting pretty sad looking and was even losing its color in some spots. The funny thing is, in the bed that had the most weeds, we actually had landscape fabric down. The weeds had just chosen to grow on top of the fabric in the layer of mulch. That made them pretty easy to pull out. I think if they come back in the future (when they come back in the future) we will just spray them with vinegar or something.
With my tools at the ready, I started the process of moving the mulch. 
I had the novel idea of keeping track of how many wheelbarrow loads of mulch I ended up moving, but I quickly gave up on that. It was a lot.
The nice thing about mulch is that it is relatively light compared to something like rocks or dirt. It didn't take too much to scoop it out of the back of the truck with a shovel, transfer it to the wheelbarrow, and then dump it out in the beds. I actually think it only took about an hour to get the whole thing unloaded. Maybe a little longer than that.
In case you are wondering, I have always thought to myself that black mulch can't really be environmentally friendly. I have no clue what kind of dyes or chemicals they add to the wood chips to get the black color, but I can't help but imagine it's somehow petroleum based. Maybe I am wrong.
Before I knew it, the truck bed was empty and I was pretty happy with how quickly the process had went. I got up in the bed with my push broom can cleaned it out as best I could.
In the US we have these local car washes all over the place where you can just pull your vehicle in, then you pay a crapload of coins to use the power sprayer and wash it yourself. In this case it was $3.00 (12 quarters) for 3 minutes and 30 seconds of spraying. You can pick different soaps and waxes to get mixed in with your sprayer, but I just used the rinse setting to get the mulch out of the back of the truck.
I also stopped at the gas station on the way home to get gas for my lawn mower.
After returning home with the truck, I spent the next hour or so mowing the lawn, then I came inside for a quick bite to eat. After lunch, I spent the rest of the afternoon into the evening doing some woodworking projects that I will write about in some later posts.
Finally, when the sun was just starting to get about halfway toward the horizon, I fired up the grill and threw some beef burgers, a chicken burger, some chicken breasts, and some mac and cheese on the grill. Throw in a couple of cocktails and an relaxing, but painful (my muscles were on fire) evening on the couch and it was a perfect way to end the day.
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All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or