Why I Oughta...

We had 15 steaming yards of mulch delivered in May - and at the time - I knew I needed more, but the truck only held 15 yards.  Here, below, is a photo showing off the next eight yards delivered on the driveway.  Taking me to 23 total yards for the front and backyard.  This was delivered in the beginning of June, but I'm posting this at the end of June.  Turns out, I'm a few yards short of what I really needed and should have bought ten to twelve yards instead of eight.  I laid it on VERY thick in many spots - in an attempt to make up for some of the deficiency last year. 23 total yards - for this year - wasn't enough. 

Last year, I had 12 yards of mulch delivered on the driveway.  And it wasn't enough.  This year, I expanded the beds in the back and knew I needed more than 12 yards.  I was planning on ordering 20 yards, but the delivery truck can only hold 15 yards.  So, that's what I ordered - thinking that I'd start with 15 and order 5-10 more after I spread it to see what was needed.   This is what 15 yards of hardwood mulch looks like below:  And here's a video of the delivery being dumped on the driveway: I've done these videos a few times.  Here's a video from 2020  showing 12 yards.  Here's a video from 2011 showing 10 yards .   I had a couple of my nephews come over to help me haul the mulch to the backyard in an attempt to save my back from the pain I had in 2020.  We were able to get all 15 yards put out in the backyard in just one day and there is quite a bit of more bed coverage needed, so I'm going to try to measure the space left and calculate how much mu

Recently, we had twelve steaming yards of hardwood fines mulch delivered to our driveway from Best Firewood and Mulch - the same folks who deliver our firewood.  That's the delivery in the video at the top of this post showing the driver doing a little bit of 'jiggling' with his lifted bed to get all of the mulch to drop.  Nine years ago, I posted a similar video of ten yards of mulch that was dropped on our old driveway.  You can watch that video here .  This new mulch is destined for the beds that I pointed out in my recent garden tour post  and will fill in the spots between the front (where we're doing the cocoa bean hull mulch) and the far back (where I've been doing the wood chips from the Villag e). I have a seven cubic yard cart (wheelbarrow...but not a traditional wheelbarrow).  There are 27 cubic feet in a yard.  Let's figure that it takes four carts to get that yard.  Twelve x four per yard = 48 carts lugged into the back and side yard.  Ther

Earlier this week, Google announced the expansion of Google Express to include delivery in the suburbs of Chicago via this blog post .  Being a 'root-for-the-home-team-kinda-guy', I *had* to give it a shot, right? Google Express allows for overnight delivery of goods from a network of retailers including Walgreens, Costco, Toys R Us and others.  Much like Amazon Prime, you can pay an annual subscription charge and receive free shipping. On this maiden order, I decided to skip the subscription and just pay the $4 it cost to get the stuff to my house.  To make things easy, I picked just one store:  Walgreens.  And after filling my cart with a few things, I got the hang of it.  I quickly realized that I had to hit $15 in stuff to get to the delivery threshold. So...I went around and plucked a few things from the various departments and nosed ahead of $15.  This was on Wednesday.  I also looked at the offerings from a few other stores.  Costco, in particular was of interest.