Mulching Over

A guy I know is in his mulching-over stage. He had 1.3 cubic feet of mulch delivered and unloaded in the middle of his driveway last week, and since then he’s been systematically shoveling it over every inch of unplanted area on his property. Even stone steps from the lower area to the upper area of the yard are mulched over. At a certain point, the act of mulching shifts from being one of tidying up and insulating a garden to one of burying, shovel-full by shovel-full. And I’m pretty sure I know what he’s burying. Oh, sure — on the surface it looks like he’s covering weeds and preventing their growth, but he’s got a lot of pain he’s covering over, too. I know him well enough to know that the time and energy he’s spending shoveling and burying is time and energy he doesn’t have to spend looking at and reflecting on the weedy parts of his life — you know, the parts that are tough to deal with and that leave your heart aching at the end of the day. (Better to have your muscles ache…) But, the truth is, those weeds will come up through that mulch, no matter how thick he piles it on. All that mulching over will only keep ‘em hidden for a little while. Sometime, he’ll have to deal with the weeds again. Maybe he’ll bury them some more, or maybe he’ll get more aggressive. Eventually, though, I’m pretty sure that he’ll have to just take a seat and face those weeds, deal with all that pain, and maybe even work his way through the struggle and into balance. Mulching over, as pretty as it makes the garden look in the first few days after you’re done, only takes you so far on this journey.