Mulch good enough to eat

It's Friday and the kiddos arrive this evening for the weekend. That's always good motivation to finish up a few tidying tasks that have lingered on through the week.

First, there's half a trailer-load of 'hoop fines' mulch to be spread. It should be just enough to finish the second terrace on the northern side of the house. The top terrace contains my prolific lime tree and some gardenias as well as my faithful old rosemary. The second terrace has bird-attracting native shrubs. I've checked a few websites and it seems that with the addition of blood and bone, hoop fines should be fine around all of those.

In fact, this is not the mulch I planned to buy when I went down to Doonan Sand and Gravel last weekend. I went looking for curly hoop to top up a rather steep bank alongside the road, where I renew the mulch around my lilly pillys every year or two. Curly hoop lasts longer and keeps the weeds down OK. It also sits well on sloping sites because the pieces of bark intertwine and 'stay put'. Doonan didn't have the exact type of mulch I wanted, but a 1-inch hoop seemed OK for the same purpose (why do we persist in measuring our mulch in inches when we've been metric for 40 years?)

Unfortunately the hoop-fines bin was right alongside the bin containing 1-inch hoop. So when I went into the office and asked the lovely lady there to load up my trailer, I may have said only 'hoop'. She sent her obliging son off to do that. She and I chatted on for a while about how nice it is to have obliging children around! And by the time I got back to the trailer, it was already half full of hoop fines, not 1-inch hoop! Her obliging son and I discussed how best to start over (emptying a trailer is a lot slower than loading it!) But then I realised my level front terraces could use the extra lift provided by a richer mulch, so I bought the 'fines' after all. And I'll go back for the 1-inch hoop as soon as the trailer's empty. The mistake was as much my fault as their's, so they really needn't have given me a discount! But my! my! what a lovely mix this is: reminds me of a chocolate-coloured shredded wheat! Don't you just love much!