In the first episode of the
classic TV drama, “Mad Men”, department store heiress Rachael Mencken is
listening to a presentation from Sterling Cooper, a Madison Avenue ad
agency. The year is 1960, an era of
rampant sexism. Pitchman Don Draper gives
Ms. Mencken the agency’s best advice: a 10%-off coupon in select ladies’
magazines.
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| The part of our property that is not wetlands - roughly half an acre - is an enormous planting bed for trees, shrubs and perennials. No grass! |
Mencken explodes with outrage.
“Our store is 60 years old,” she says. “We
share a wall with Tiffany’s. Honestly, a
coupon?” Smooth-talking Don Draper
responds, “Miss Mencken, coupons work. I
think your father would agree with the strategy.” The equally suave Roger Sterling adds, “It’s
not just research. Housewives love
coupons.”
We’re meant to recoil in horror
even as we smile smugly from our 21st Century perch: the idea that
women could be successfully manipulated by the simple expedient of offering
them a coupon. Today, such a heretical
thought would never see the light of day.
Perish the idea!
Well, maybe not exactly or,
maybe there has been some kind of role reversal. Six weeks ago, I found a coupon in my inbox. It came from one of my favorite nurseries and
it offered $20 off of any delivery. Not
off of any plant or shrub… just twenty bucks off of a delivery.
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| The old mulch is peeled away down to the underlying loam |
Well, it just so happened that Betty
and I had been discussing buying leaf mold – those finely chopped-up leaves
that have aged a year or more and are perfect for mulching flower beds. We have something better than flower beds at
our new home: an entire yard – half an
acre – that is one enormous shrub, tree, and flower bed. It consists of eighteen inches of screened
loam topped by several inches of mulch and, since last October, a coating of
chopped autumn leaves. Our great idea
was to put another inch or two of leaf mold on top of that parfait for even
better future soil, impervious to weeds and grass. We knew we were probably going to buy leaf
mold, it was just a matter of where and when.
So, off we went to the nursery, my
printed-out coupon in hand. We went
straight to the sample bin of leaf mold.
Great. Exactly what we
wanted. Ready to order!
Not so fast. Betty started looking at the other bins. And especially at the aged leaf and grass
compost. It was jet black, crumbly, and
smelled of the good earth.
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| The old mulch comes away in matted chunks that need to be broken up |
“We need this,” Betty told me,
letting a handful of black gold trickle through her fingers. “We have dozens of shrubs still to plant and
hundreds of perennials. This is perfect!” And so we bought ten cubic yards of compost
instead of ten cubic yards of leaf mold. I used my $20 coupon which brought our
total purchase price down by about five percent.
Three days later, a truck delivered
our ten cubic yards of compost. Which is
when we discovered our strategic error: compost and leaf mold are not the same
thing. Leaf mold is a great insulator;
it’s like bark mulch except that it is fluffier and looks nicer. Compost also looks very nice, but it is a
nutrient-rich medium in which to grow things.
Had we purchased leaf mold, we
could have raked it over the plantable part of our property, topping the loam
and mulch with a fresh insulating layer that, in a year or so, would itself
become part of the soil. Time
commitment? About a day. Compost, on the other hand, is like adding a
layer of super-rich, ready-to-plant soil.
It would also take about a day to spread compost over our yard but, once
in place, it would nurture each and every seed that fell on it, be that seed
one of grass, weeds, poison ivy, strangler fig, kudzu, or maple trees.
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| The dark area represents what has been completed to date. It's roughly five percent of the job. |
To put it mildly, that would not
be a smart thing to do. Here’s what we
did instead:
Over the course of four weeks,
we used about three cubic yards of compost to plant those new shrubs,
perennials, and annuals. Which left us
with just seven cubic yards of the stuff.
All the while, we contemplated
an alternative – any alternative - to what in our hearts we knew all along was
the only possible solution for the other seven cubic yards.
This week, I began what is
without a doubt the hardest work I will do all summer. In five-foot-by-ten-foot strips, I am raking
off the top few inches of mulch from our yard…
No. That’s not right. “Raking” is an inaccurate description. A year after being put down, the bark mulch has
begun breaking down into its own, soil-like texture. It is, in short, now a solid, hard-pressed
mat of material. To remove it, I bang
the tines of my steel rake into the mulch and pull up a piece a foot wide and a
few inches long, which I then chop into bite-size pieces that resemble what was
put down originally.
When the old mulch has been
pulled into a pile and the loam below is exposed, I add tubs of compost and
spread that compost out to an inch’s thickness.
When that is done I pull the reconstituted mulch back over the top of
the compost and loam. The compost lays
atop the soil, gradually enriching it for the next round of shrubs and
perennials we will plant.
As of this morning, I had
completed work about 400 square feet of our yard. I have another 8,000 square feet to go. Gosh, I’ve done five percent of the
project!
Which is exactly what that
coupon represented as a discount to the purchase price of the compost that got
me into this situation.
