Have you seen the 1950’s science fiction classic “The Blob” with Steve McQueen? If you haven’t, you really must. Said creature, which attacks a peaceful little community and comes oozing out of the front entrance of a movie theater in the film’s most famous moment, actually looks a little bit like the thing pictured above. But the thing in the photograph is no alien creature- just 28 bags of small-chunk mulch from Stein’s Garden Center. Actually, it hasn’t eaten the garage or either of us but those 28 bags absolutely filled the back of our Santa Fe to the point where I thought it might explode through the roof or through the back door – or both. “No problem!” my ever-optimistic wife said as we began piling the bags into our vehicle. Well, we ended up with those bags sandwiched in the car almost like sandbags. . . to borrow an all-too-familiar image from the last few days. . . and could not have fit so much as a tea bag in there after that. But we did get them in and home and unloaded into the garage, where they will sit until tomorrow when my wife will do something with them. Just what, I honestly don’t know and don’t really want to know. All I know is that mulch is not as cheap as you would think but is apparently well worth the money as well as the hernia one suffers in hauling them around. So I wish my wife well and trust that lovely things will bloom through the mulch even as it chokes back all of those nasty weeds. ( I think that’s the idea.)
By the way, in case you think I’m a lazy slob . . . I am, especially when it comes to the lawn and garden. But I don’t seem to have any voice students at the moment with a hankering to pay me in mowing rather than money, so it’s little old me out there with the lawn mower every week. But at least I’ve figured out how to use that time wisely. (Otherwise, that’s what I hate about mowing- you can’t do it and read a book or talk on the cell phone or write emails. Even I’m not crazy enough to attempt any of that.) So now, my mowing time is when I formulate my answer to whatever Opera Question of the Week I’m doing with Trevor. Last week, I mentally wrote the review of the Netrebko/ Villazon duets albums. And tomorrow, I’ll be finalizing my list of my Ten Favorite Opera Arias and my rationale for each one. While I’m mowing.
What a weirdo.