Living here in Colorado Springs there are a few constants that those in the Midwest, South or East Coast might not appreciate---namely dealing with a semi-arid climate and the dirt that comes along with it. Unlike the Midwest where drainage or overgrown vegetation might be a problem, the high altitude, leeward side of the mountains poses another problem when it comes to landscape---just plain dirt.
Many people try to combat this fight---namely the inability to economically grow grass or some other affordable ground-cover that also is low maintenance. Colorado Springs' residents often turn to sticks and stones, translated---using all forms of rocks, pebbles and even boulders to landscape their dirt. I even know someone who put in astroturf for their front lawn! It is not uncommon for people to use rocks to fill their parkways or even simply fill in the entire yard with stones. Others will use sticks in the form of mulch along with xeroscape plants---AKA planting an indigenous fauna of semi-arid vegetation bushes and even cactus. We are fortunate, our yard has a healthy old lawn that we didn't even water last summer but there still remain areas of concern. The thing is sticks and stones can be expensive unless you know where you can get them free and are willing to use some enterprising elbow grease and human ingenuity acquiring them.
Today we went to the city's public mulch pile pictured here and located across the road from Colorado Springs City Parks Maintenance Facility at,
1421 Recreation Way. To find this location go north on Glen Avenue from the intersection of Glen & Unitah (the stoplight where the
7-11 and
Coaltrain Wine & Liquors is located), then turn left immediately onto San Miquel St., as Glen dead ends, go west one block where the road curves and becomes Recreation Way, which runs alongside the railroad tracks that parallels Interstate 25. Drive past the City Parks Recreation & Cultural Offices where then you will find the maintenance facility. That is where they grind mulch from the city's harvested trees, this area is not open to the public. But across the road, alongside the railway tracks there is a public station where you can retrieve
FREE MULCH without limit. Today was a great day to get the mulch, not only was the weather fine but much of the mulch was relatively newly ground christmas trees. We prefer pine, fir or spruce wood chips to other woods such as elms or maple, which often filled with branches and leaves. Plus the added aroma of fresh pine is a short-term bonus.
The value of our 15 twelve gallon plastic tubs that we used to transport the mulch in our small hatchback car we figured was minimally worth $75.00-$90.00, if we had purchased the amount of bagged mulch from a retailer. All it took for this to happen was motivating our college-aged son to go with me, grab a shovel, and then haul filled tubs to the car and then to our desired areas in the yard and then spread the mulch this morning.
We filled in some troublesome muddy places in our alley parking area (see below) and also landscaped a no-growth area around our blue spruce tree alongside our house, (pictured above). This spring I am confident we will go there a number of times to bring mulch to place under our lilac hedges and around and behind our storage shed as well as the now vacant dog run that hopefully we will provide a puppy to use this spring.
Furthermore I am confident I will also traverse up Ute Pass and retrieve some Pikes Peak pink gravel this coming spring to use around some of Sue's flower plantings and also place on our no-growth parkway in the front. But I will reserve that insight where we go and how we do this for a later post. In the meantime, today we didn't pay full price, in fact we didn't pay any price! In the meantime keep searching out how to live in these times of austerity and frugality in that the latest economic article I have read states we have six or seven years ahead in this period of deleveraging.
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