newspaper.
A while back I was feeling the guilt over buying the Sunday paper only for the TV guide. It was before the DVR. (If I could make my computer draw a heart around those three letters, I would. ) My daughter, in an effort to stop the moaning and complaining said, “why don’t you shred it?”I had tried mulching with thick layers of newspapers in the past. I learned that newspaper takes quite some time to rot down. This was particularly painful as I'm from New Jersey and did not know the meaning of watchful waiting. (When they say "thank you for your patience" I turn around quickly to see who they're talking to.) Oh yea, mulching/ rotting/waiting: Before that rotting happened, the flat sheets of newspaper turned to crumples of papery tumbleweed, lifting the dirt I had to apply to keep it down, and tumbling litter-ally (litter-ish?) around the garden.
So, when Molly said shred it, after the bells stopped going off in my head, (pretty sounds, as opposed to the tinnitus screee that never does stop and accounts for my latest sojourns to distraction) I ran to WalMart and got the el-cheapo-est shredder they had. I began shredding in earnest. Actually, it was in Venice. Who the hell knows where earnest is? He's probably in Distraction, since I drove him (and many more) there myself. If you see him, send him to me, please.
But the toy-like shredder could not stand the supreme challenge my garden innovation presented. It didn't last and was returned and exchanged (regularly). I ended up acquiring the fanciest home shredder $100 could buy (not all that fancy.) The thing will do 30-pages at a time and I love it perhaps a little too much. No more weekly weakling gasping-for-mercy home-office models.
Soon I was guilt-free - so much so that I had a 6-month full-time subscription to the paper. I began figuring out how to suck the life out of my friends and loved ones (even further) in a new and organic way. I convinced friends to fork over their own weeks' papers. I swear I could have reconstructed a tree. Anyway, I was paper-rich and eventually cancelled my subscription, thereby cutting myself off from all knowledge of the happenings in the world - not a great loss, considering I was riding the short-bus to Anxietyville - just down the road from Distraction.The fluffy mulch began marching down the garden paths. With some torrential Florida rain, it reformed back into sheets. Actually any watering would do, and is necessary during dry spells. (I wonder if this could be how papier mache was discovered.) The shreds did not blow away. The mulch laid there like lox on a bagel (or like an embarrassed zebra.) Occasional strands escaped to loll on the deck, stick to my bare feet, or come inside to bond with the dust-bunnies. (Draw your own conclusions on my housekeeping skills..) I don't know why I can tolerate - even love - this. I've long had a ban on holiday tinsel and Easter grass. But this stuff is natural, it breaks down eventually if you don't sweep. (Again - see housekeeping skills above.)
Outside, wherever bare soil thought it was getting away with something in the garden beds, SPLAT. Mulch happened.. We will have NO NUDITY IN THE BEDs! (Hey, have I discovered a source of my dating problems?) The "shreddings" looked like the snowy paths of New Jersey , resting quietly (?) in my memories. (Geez! Willya look?! I totally fell on my ayass out hea!) Seriously nothing rests quietly here. Even the dog barks when Anything Happens Anywhere on Earth.
(Also in those musty memory corners : A school bus that slid onto my neighbor’s lawn, skiing , skidding, careening atop all that icy stuff - eventually adding to my justifying the move to Florida. You can imagine: It's pretty crowded and noisy upstairs in Andye Land .)So, I don’t knit and I can’t see to embroider any more. But I DO watch an ungodly amount of TV. And now, while that’s happening, I can multitask, folding my friends' papers, mail, magazines, and old files, (okay - also grandbabes' artwork - but don't tell, ) - anything papery - and shredding the suckers into submission. During commercials, I dash outside and spread containers-full of my shredded mulch onto paths and garden beds. I don't feel guilty about the kid's artwork, friends' greeting cards, Oprah magazines. They've become ONE with my garden. Every headline, every kind thought, every piece of reading material that might come into view goes into that shredder and gets returned to the earth.
Occasionally some hardy weedy clods might poke their heads up through the mulch - but I’m playin’ Whack-a-Mole, (more dating problems?) - or just dropping bunches of mulch on them as I tra-la my way around the garden. I can walk barefoot. I don't have to bend down endlessly to weed. No more crawling around on my knees (to weed.) It sometimes looks a little like the road through Candy Land, what with the weathering of time in between patches, and different colors of the batches. Andye Land is even more colorful, if no more restful.
Now, I'm always on the prowl for more newspapers. I think the newspaper deliverers in the dark of night turn off their lights and engines and try to coast silently by. So, please feel free to drop by and donate. Just by reading this, you, too, are part of the goings on going on. Welcome! Welcome to Andye Land!
