Mulching memories

I love mulching my vegetable garden. I love using my old Township Journals to do it. It makes my garden a happy place, cultivating as many memories as crops. Gardeners have told me that old newspaper makes wonderful mulch and it does. I have been doing it for years. With a “reuse and recycle” frame of mind, I head out to my garden each summer ready to beat the weeds. Being the lazy gardener that I am, I would rather take an hour or two to mulch spend the season weeding.. An hour or two of mulching; who am I kidding? Every June, I head to my humble plot with about a years worth of weekly newspapers in an old grocery bag. The big dilemma starts with deciding which paper to sit on so that my bottom stays dry. I do not have the heart to sit on anyone, so I usually choose an old full-page ad. There are no real problems with mulching with newspaper. The ink has no negative effects. The paper breaks down and is good organic material for the soil and the weeds can not grow through it. The problem is that I get caught up reading the old issues when I’m supposed to be mulching. It is as if I had never seen the articles before. I am somehow more captivated by them because of the garden setting. Time slips by magically. I smile as I reminisce about the year past, and I pull out pictures and articles of friends and family that made the paper. These are the pages I line my rows with. I like it when I enter my garden and see happy people that I know and love looking back at me. It may sound silly, but I have had many gardeners confess that they have done the same thing. Once my garden is lined with cheerful people and events, I lightly cover the sheets of paper with some mulch hay. This layering method conserves water, allowing my vegetables to soak up vial nutrients and the happy memories of celebrated times.