Practicing to Walk Like a Heron

The Man Who Loved Mulch

126 The Man Who Loved Mulch It was always there to load, carry, spread in every bed, along the edges of the paths he’d carved through the woods that hid his home. He’d say, “I love knowing every spring I’ll need to haul again.” Over the long snows, last year’s mulch, smothered somewhere back within the fallen leaves, lost its thick dark brow, leaving a ghostly gray that in the day gave nothing back when the light fell into the morning. There was no getting the tiny clogs of dry dirt from under his jagged fingernails. “I’m not going anywhere,” he’d smile. The piles came every April. He’d wait three days, letting the air settling into the earth settle into the mulch. “It comes alive,” he’d say. Then on the morning of the fourth day, he would wake, dress, look at his nails, have his coffee, and head to the shed. He’d take down his shovel, push his wheelbarrow to the pile and begin. With each shovelful he breathed in the dark damp then turned and, like the mule he liked to think he was, pulled his way first to the peonies where handful after handful he’d lay the worm- 127 warm mulch around the wine-red stems that rose every May since his grandfather planted the roots. ...