HAY HAY WE’RE THE FRATBOYS
May 28th, 2009 adminNext to the zip-tie, Craigslist is a gardener’s best friend. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, skip this and go to Smith&Hawken.com. If you know exactly what I’m talking about, tell me which keywords you type in when on the hunt for stuff. Quick! Don’t over-think this! Personally, I read FREE, MATERIALS and FARM & GARDEN on Craigslist. Then I search for “plant” “rock” “mulch” “clawfoot bathtub” and “vegetable.” In this manner I have wasted many hours driving all over hell and gone buying cheap daylillies, a pot that looks like a two-faced lion and a 350-gallon plastic vat that once held Kool-AId concentrate, but also loading my Honda Fit with random free rocks. I don’t have enough rocks. I need more rocks. They don’t call it the Fit for nothing. Those rocks are heavy. Sometimes I need to make 2 or 3 trips. Who cares.
Last week, I was thrilled to spot 80 bales of hay on the FREE page. Hay, even when baled, is lighter than rock, and I needed serious mulch. I sped to the scene of the free hay give-away, which turned out to be a fraternity on the UT campus. Its imposing brick presence was encircled by a wrought iron fence, every gate of which was locked. But frat boyswere drinking on the roof, as you would expect. I yelled up at them and one came down and took me around to the service entrance where the last 5 bales were stored in an F-150 pickup. I had a lot of questions: where did the other 75 bales go? What Johnny-on-the-spot rancher beat me to the punch? Why does a frat obtain 80 bales of hay only to give them away? Was this some kind of agricultural philanthropy PR scheme undertaken to take people’s minds off hazing through binge-drinking? But Preston, or whatever the boy’s name was, had Lone Stars to attend to.
I stuffed in the first two bales behind my daughter Gus, who has seasonal allergies. Then I crammed every available leftover space with loose hay, until my rearview mirror showed nothing but a barnyard scene. On the way home, Gus stopped sneezing long enough to ask what a fraternity was. As usual, I launched into an interesting lecture. Again, I didn’t know what I was talking about, but she was receptive. “The Greek system?” she asked. “Do they speak Greek?” I threw in some details about Greek yogurt and began fantasizing about Greeking yogurt in my home kitchen. Before dinner, I unloaded all the hay onto my heat-stressed vegetable garden soil. It’s gorgeous. I feel great. I wish the interior of my car weren’t black velour, but I consider it a day well spent.
