A journey for mulch

One of the first things friends notice about my family is that we have our own particular -- and sometimes peculiar -- ways of doing ordinary tasks.

Take Tuesday, for instance. After watching the movers unload most of my earthy belongings (my car remains in transit), Mom and I set off on a journey: 70 miles round trip for -- drum roll please -- a pick-up bed full of mulch.

Mom, as you might have guessed, takes her gardening -- flowers, fruits and vegetables -- quite seriously. From mid-March to late October, she spends most available mornings, afternoons and evenings on my family's six-tenths of an acre, planting, weeding and harvesting.

When it comes to mulch -- or tanbark, as we call -- she says there's just no use in purchasing a load from any of the closer local vendors (including one about two miles from the house). The products they sell, she says, disintegrate over a winter to tiny sticks and powder.

To avoid this calamity, she makes a trek into the mountains each year to Carl Rosenberry and Sons Lumber in Fort Loudon (an apparently unincorporated area near Chambersburg known for, of all things, a fort).

Tuesday was a good day for the long haul: sunny and unseasonably warm. The redbud trees weren't yet in full bloom, but I wasn't bothered. I haven't seen mountains in a while, so the Appalachians alone were exciting to me.

(As was the recently renovated Giant grocery store in Chambersburg, where we stopped on the way. Organic foods! Selection! Fancy lighting! It was like shopping in the big city.)

As with other tasks in life, the journey in this journey is most of the fun. To get to Fort Loudon, we traveled through Chambersburg, past Dilly's -- where I've eaten hamburgers after mornings of rainy fishing -- and through St. Thomas, where I believe I once covered an ox roast.

We also drove along Path Valley Road, which winds through the mountains, in front of roadside stores, hunting grounds and even a log cabin.

The actual act of getting the mulch, I have to say, was a bit anticlimactic. After all, it's just a business. You pay, you follow the tractor through the stock yard and you wait while he fills up the truck.

An adventure, however, nonetheless. Total damages: $34.87, plus mileage (which I imagine is fairly lousy with 1.9 cubic yards of wood chips in the truck bed).