We have a friend who was generous enough to give us a truck load full of mulch for the play set. He owns a tree cutting business and has to pay to dump his chipped up trees off site; so we asked him if he would let us have a load, instead of him paying to have it dumped. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

When the truck arrived it was six inches too big to pass through our gate to the back yard. The plan was for him to dump it inside our timber box and all I would need to do was to spread it out. (six inches!!!) When we realized that it would not fit in the back he pulled back around to the front yard and I asked him to pour it on the parking pad.

He backed pretty close to our garage door and the truck bed pitched upward. The mulch began to flow out and flow out, and flow out. It was five foot high and ran the entire length of our drive way. We have been parking on the street for over two weeks now. I don’t know how many cubic yards that is, but man it looked like tons! I began by taking my wheeled barrel and knew after half dozed trips around to the backyard that this was not going to work.

I borrowed Crag G.’s truck (again) and have loaded the mulch truck load after truck load. In the rain, the dark, and the severe heat I have loaded mulch. The other night I actually had a dream I was shoveling mulch. As I write this entry, there is a full load on the truck, which I will move in the morning, and what I hope is one last truck load on the ground. Then I will be finished with the pile of mulch.

Drew, how interesting! Ok, I do have a point to make. Kimberly asked me several times, “why don’t you get some help!” But that would have completely ruined this whole thing for me. When I saw the pile as it avalanched off the truck, I knew this would either break me or make me stronger – I wanted the challenge. There were times when I wanted to quit. But as I saw the pile get smaller one truck load at a time, and one shovel full at a time it became something that I had to do. If I could move all this mulch, then I could do some other things that looked impossible as well. I will just attack them one shovel full at a time. We have also scheduled a children’s camp at our house so everything has to be completed by Monday.

Have you ever just wanted a challenge that seemed a bit overwhelming?