The Dump of a Lifetime.

So Mamma T made a friend on craigslist that had a bunch of free wood chips... for free.
Well, let me backtrack a little and explain that the backyard has been a constant struggle ever since we first laid eye on it.
We have made huge strides in it's development over the years and it hasn't cost us hardly anything.
Mainly we have scavenged rocks and lumber and done what we could.
And I liked what we were doing, I like the direction that our sweat and labor was taking us.
We were united in our vision of change, but our ultimate visions were not the same.

So T decided to order these wood chips.
And while I have to admit that I liked the idea, I was weary because her vision was basically a chip carpet across the entire yard with no regard to any of the subtle ways that the yard had settled and prospered in various spots. Also the amount of chips that was going to be delivered sounded like way too much but by the time I brought these issues up it was too late. The call had been made and the truck would be on it's way within a day.

A day passed, then another day, then I decided that this dude was never going to show up and I was relieved.
What ended up happening was last Saturday, a week ago, a giant truck pulled up in front of the house packed with wood chips.
He backed into the driveway, blocking traffic from both sides of the street, and he dumped out half of his load into a giant, dusty pile and sped away laughing.



I ended up filling a wheeled garbage can, one load at a time, and rolling it through the living room and into the back. I'd say I did this 15 to 20 times and I ended up covering all the space that I could cover. And still I barely made a dent in the original pile. If the original dump was the size of a van, the current dump is the size of a mini van. This presents a problem because we have no real way to move the rest of the chips, and I am starting to worry that we will piss off the neighbors. What started out as an idea I was opposed to and wanted nothing to do with has turned into a problem that confronts me every time I open the front door.

Numerous solutions have been tossed around lately.
Most of them involve getting T's brother to come over in a truck and haul it all away. The mess that this will create inside a truck is pretty obvious, not to mention the back breaking labor of transferring the chips from the ground into the truck. If I were a true Bushwickian I would just push it all out into the street and let the city clean it up, but I have a conscience and it goes against my nature.

What we have here is a conundrum. That, and a giant pile of undesired wood chips.
This is not over my friends, not by a long shot.