This is a further explanation of one of the titles included on my “semi-retired” business card. (Mulch Magician)

My wife was out of town again, which meant dinner was whatever was in the fridge that could survive a second heating. After staring at three containers of uncertain origin, I decided a walk was a better option than food poisoning roulette.

I had an audiobook. I had a route. I had a text out to my son one street over, which he was apparently in no hurry to answer. Fine. I walked.

About ten minutes in, I spotted a couple of women in a front yard — one holding a hose aimed at some trees that had clearly given up, the other supervising from the porch with a German Shepherd on a leash. I crossed the street to say hello, because apparently that’s the kind of person I am.

The dog was skeptical. Her owner told her several times I was fine, then shook my hand in front of her as a formal introduction. The dog considered this, leaned in, and licked my hand. Endorsed. I was in.

What followed was a twenty-minute conversation I had absolutely no business being part of, and yet somehow led.

The trees had been pruned badly — topped, actually, which is basically a death sentence delivered slowly. The grass was Bermuda sod laid in December of 2021, right before they moved in. They moved from Seattle, where watering the lawn is something God handles for free. They waited for spring. Spring, in any meaningful grass-growing sense, never came. They’d tried a series of quick fixes that the yard had rejected with contempt.

I suggested weed mat and perennials for the flower bed. I floated the idea of waiting until fall to deal with the grass. I cautioned them about ordering a truckload of dirt before a rain. I was, by any objective measure, a complete stranger who had wandered in off the sidewalk and was now running a landscaping consultation in their front yard.

At some point I said something like, “I could come help you with some of this.” Then I heard myself. First meeting. Showing up with unsolicited yard opinions is one thing. Showing up with a shovel is how you become a story someone tells later.

Then one of them mentioned they’d found a drug pipe on top of the kitchen cabinets when they moved in.

“That’s not good,” I said.

“We don’t smoke it ourselves,” she said, “but we own a dispensary. So our main question is — what exactly were they doing while they were high in our house?”

Apparently, one of the answers was fixing the door latch — with notebook paper stuffed around the strike plate. High-effort, low-intelligence engineering that you can only pull off when a glass pipe is involved.

My son called during all of this. Then called again. I let it go. He would understand. He’d seen me do this his whole life — stop to talk to a stranger when someone who knows me is technically available. And honestly, I’d just seen him the day before. The women with the dying grass and the drug pipe had never met me. They needed me more.

Toward the end, something clicked. I asked if they happened to be hockey fans. They loved the Kraken (Seattles Pro Team). I told them about the rink just off I-35 south of 240, the boys who live with us, and the extra tickets we pass out to potential fans.

The two of them looked at each other. Nodded. Already knew who they were inviting.

I walked home with no audiobook progress, a missed call from my son, and the quiet satisfaction of a man who had done exactly what he set out to do — even if he hadn’t known what that was when he left the house.

Maybe it was the yard advice. Maybe it was the hockey tickets. Maybe it was just better to talk to absolute strangers than to call someone who’s heard all my material before.

The trees are still lopsided. But I’ve got fans to cultivate.