Bring on the Mulch

Between the HOA, our cars, the yard and the curling club, I've been really busy lately juggling stuff in my free time.  My miata developed a leak in a coolant hose several weeks ago and, after talking it over with a friend, I decided that I probably should replace all of the coolant lines on the car.  It is a 19 year old car, so better safe than sorry.  Unfortunately, on the miata that equals out to 9 coolant hoses!  Even worse, some of them are in some really tight spaces that are hard to reach, even with my small hands.

I ended up destroying a couple of the hose clamps while removing the hoses, so I had to order replacement clamps.  Then I got distracted by beautiful days that were more appropriately spent outside in the yard instead of in the garage.  The next thing I know, a few weeks have passed by and the car is still up on jack stands.  I’m one hose away from being done with replacing all the hoses, but then I have to replace all of the parts that I had to remove to get to the lines (air box, crossover pipe, the under body tray, passenger side wheel, intake manifold support, oil filter, and countless electrical connections that were undone to move harnesses out of the way).  I need to get it back together soon since it is already July.  I'll have to put it away for winter in a few months!

It is hard to believe that this is our fourth summer in our house (and Bloomington!), which means that it has been 4 years since I mulched our rear beds.  I put a heavy coat of mulch down the first time, so it lasted for a while, but it is so thin now that the weeds have attempted to reclaim the yard.  I've had to resort to the “nuclear” option of spraying round up every other week to try to keep the beds clear.  Since the rear beds are so big, I really didn't want to pay for the nice, expensive shredded bark mulch that we use in the beds around the house. 

It took some time, but I finally found a source that fits my budget: free mulch.  That’s right, the mulch is free and I just have to pay a small amount for delivery.  The negative is that it is “single grind” mulch so it can be a little chunky… but I’ll take some chunks here and there in order to save major $$$.  There are occasional big pieces of wood that somehow made it through the grinder intact, so I am pulling those big pieces out and adding them to my stockpile of wood for the fire pit.  Problem solved.

The Pile!

The guy dropped off two loads of 6 cubic yards each last Friday and the CFO was quite surprised at the size of the pile.  She was even more surprised when I said we would need another 1-2 loads after that! I spent a good bit of last weekend spreading mulch and I've put a good dent in the pile.  I decided that I wanted to trench the edge of the bed so that there is a clear, defined edge for the turf.  It looks really nice, but it is a pain in the rear to slowly work along the edge of the bed one shovel width at a time.  Some of the grass has spread too, so I am removing chunks of sod in those places, which is slowing me even more because I have to dispose of the sod.  I’m probably almost half way around the edge of the rear bed right now.

 During the bed edging

This side is mulched.  We've also been stalking the clearance section in the plant department at Lowes, looking for bargain plants to fill in this side of the yard.  It is only a matter of time before someone buys the house next to us and we'd like to have some green between us and them.  Too bad our new additions have been small 1 gallon plants!

I've also been busy working with a group of people who are trying to form a curling club here in Bloomington.  Until last year, the city parks department was coordinating the league, but then they decided that they didn't want to do it any more.  They basically said that if we want to curl, we have to pull together a group and collect the money required to rent the ice at the rink, which is over $200/hr. to rent.  A core group of 10 people have met 6-7 times and we are finally working on having our first event later in July (if enough people sign up).  

There was a lot of debate over the name of the club, but the final vote named it Illinois Central Curling Club.  I thought Central Illinois Curling Club sounded better, but I was in the minority.  I think several of them liked the play on words of "I C curling" as "I see curling."  Once the name was nailed down, I started working on logos for the club.  It started with variations based off of the Illinois Central Railroad and, after numerous variations, it was finally narrowed down to two.  The shape of the I's still hearken back to the railroad logos, but the overall design definitely have more of a curling theme to them. The group couldn't decide between these two, so I guess we are going to have two logos.  I think we'll use the round one as a group crest and the purple one will be used on shirts/stickers/etc.

We’re looking forward to the upcoming 3 day weekend for the Fourth of July.  The CFO’s parents are driving out on Thursday and will be spending the holiday weekend with us.  Have a great holiday!