Excuse me, your hose is showing

I am blessed if not embarrassed to admit that our family is in the irrigation business. Now before you think
"oh, that's how she waters all those plants"... uuuhhh...your right, that is how I water all those plants.

Truth be known, if watering was left up to me by the method of having to drag hoses, I would have killed most of my garden by now.

Not to be one to rub salt in wounds, my pots are also watered by automatic misters. Did I hear a collective groan?

So, having "fessed up", I can get to the real point of this post.

Mulch!

With me, mulch is a real love/hate relationship. I LOVE that mulch makes every garden look 10 times better than before it was put down. I love that it conserves water and suppresses weeds.
But, I especially love that it hides my hose.


Soaker hose is so ugly when it shows. The hose I have is this ugly clay color. Why the company made it that color is beyond me. Unless your soil is that Carolina clay color,( which mine is not) it sticks out like a "Saww thumbb" said with a southern accent.

 Now we have all seen how the mulch market has been inundated with mulch choices. Black mulch, red mulch, brown mulch, gravels of every color including neon, pine bark chips, cedar chips, shredded wood of every variety, cocoa hulls ( that smell like chocolate...yumm) and on and on.

But I am a natural kinda girl, so I usually go for the" naturalest" kind.
No dyed or fancy colors for me.
But when the economy is low and belts need to be tightened, price prevails.

So, when a big box store puts their artificially enhanced black mulch on sale, this girl caved.
Yup, 80-2 cu. ft. bags of  "looks like your garden had a fire" black mulch.
What can I say?  It was $1.88 a bag !! and to make myself feel better I threw in some natural pine chips.
I just hope I wont hate it for too long.