Mulch ado.

My favorite supermarket was having a springtime mulch sale. What a coincidence -- I needed some mulch! And they had the red dyed stuff, my favorite! Why not buy what I need now, and avoid the hassle of going to a garden store?

Seems like a boring blog entry, doesn't it? Stay with me a second.

The good news is, the mulch was on skids right outside by the shopping carts. The bad news is, I still had to bring them inside to pay for them. And I needed nine bags, each containing 1.5 cubic feet and weighing about 30 pounds damp. 

A normal guy might take one bag in and ask for it to be rung up nine times, but as I am sure you know, Fred is no normal guy. No, I thought that might look dishonest. So I loaded three bags on the bottom rack of the cart, five in the basket, and one in the toddler seat. Then, mask in place, I bumbled into the store, humming a light tune like this was nothing weird, past the produce, past the florist, past the customer service desk, and into the checkout area. And I checked out. So far, so good.

But I should note that this supermarket sits high on a hill, and its parking lot is steep and progressively steeper the farther from the store one gets. So it was me, a (roughly) 60-pound cart, and 270 pounds of mulch starting a descent to where I'd foolishly parked a number of spaces away from the store itself. 

At first it was no problem, but as it got steeper the cart started to steer toward shiny new cars owned by others. All humming ceased. Seeing chaos about to ensue, I exchanged my grip on the handle and sidled alongside the side, using my body as a shield to keep the cart on a diagonal path toward my car. And luckily, I was able to make it there and move around to the front to make sure the cart did not go past my car, because from there is the road out of the lot and into the wilds of the world beyond. 

That's an extreme case, but the steepness of the lot can be challenging. This is especially true at the holidays, when people get big orders. I'm surprised that I haven't ever pulled in before Thanksgiving and seen a little ol' lady chasing a cart full of feast supplies down that hill. That damn turkey mayn't have flown in its life, but by damn, is it flyin' now!

Anyhow, mission accomplished, and now I don't have to go back to Home Depot for a while. Which is nice, because they leave the mulch sacks out in the rain and so they weigh more like fifty pounds each. Although their parking lot is flat.