Be careful what you wish for

I signed up with chipdrop.in, in hopes a local arborist (who is also signed up with the service) would drop some wood chips at my property. No one did, no one did, and when I looked at the map of local chip drops, they were all on the far east side of town. I live north central, far enough away to not be worth the trip, I guess.

Lucky for me, neighbors on the next street decided to eliminate the pine trees fronting an empty lot they recently purchased. I usually hate to see trees removed, but the lot looks better AND I got a load of wood chips. It smells like xmas.

The guy who brought the truckload over kept warning me it would be a LOT of chips, but there really wasn't any way for him to dump less than the full load. I will share them with my immediate neighbors, but not before I use up as many as I can. And I think I can actually use them all myself, if I mulch the area between my privacy fence and the privet that belongs to the neighbor behind me.

Thank goodness for my riding mower and garden cart, as there is no way my SO and I could move all those chips using just body power. On day one, we managed to eliminate enough of the pile that I could get my car in and out of the garage. Today I took down the wire fence in the backyard, to make it easier to dump chips around the raised beds. It's still a lot of work, and I hope to never have to repeat this labor-of-love-my-yard.

BTW, if you inspect the photo above, you will see my SO semi-crouched behind the pile. Behind him is the 'Perfect Purple' flowering crab. I detached its trunk from one of the supports the other day, so now it is free to wiggle about a bit, as much as the second support system will allow. It is my understanding that the swaying of a tree helps it establish its roots as it struggles to cling to the Earth and remain upright.