When a Little is Good, More is Better By Laura J. Oliver

I have a philosophy which is, if a little is good, more is better. A teaspoon of Miracle-Gro once a week makes the flowers bloom? How about a tablespoon every day? Kaboom. 

Leah-dog agrees with me on this philosophy. One walk a day is good? Three is waaay better, mama. 

This does not pertain to everything, however, as you shall see. 

Someone we will just call Not-Me, over-ordered mulch for this small city yard—to the tune of six yards–which is a mound, no lie, the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. And since this house has no driveway or off-street parking, the tractor-trailer that delivered this astonishing order had to dump it on the sidewalk and street in front of the house. 

Immediately, city traffic enforcement began cruising by, very excited at this new development. Parking had been compromised. Scofflaws were afoot! That was me, now doomed to haul the mulch, one wheelbarrow load at a time, up the 3 brick steps into the front yard, behind the wrought iron fence, to free the avenue of parking obstacles. 

Professional landscaping trucks cruised by hour after hour, the employees in the cabs looking down, shaking their heads with incredulity, and probably placing bets on the impossible task. As the hours wore on, parking officials cased the situation more frequently, waiting for that one opportunity, say, during a break for water, that they could claim the mulch had been abandoned and was now a legitimate violation. 

I shoveled, heaved, and dragged for 7 hours without pause. I missed a physical therapy appointment; lunch was on the fly. But by 4 o’clock that afternoon, the car-sized mound of mulch on the street was now a car-sized mound in the front yard. 

It was a lot of a lot, as Taylor Swift would say.

What if something crawls in there over the winter I asked Not-Me, eyeing the mountain, which was as tall as my head. I had encountered this once before, you remember. In my previous neighborhood, forty snakes had come slithering out of a mulch pile in the spring, in which they had been incubating for God knows how long. All of which I had had to kill by myself for the safety of a two-year-old toddler standing on the far side of the pile.

I was assured this would not happen twice. Yeah, what are the chances that something creepy wants to live in the new mulch pile? 

Yet when I went to move more of the mulch to places that didn’t need it a week later, the rake hit two big eggs. Perfect, unbroken, and yet buried deep within Magic Mountain. Too big to be snake eggs, I told myself, yet what mother duck would burrow into a mulch pile and abandon her eggs there? Maybe they had been stolen by a raccoon! A little bandit with a black mask and little black hands! Stowed away for future use. 

I pulled the eggs out and left them next to the house foundation to admire and wonder over. Two days later, they had disappeared without a trace. 

But this weekend, I was taking the dog for a walk, and on the side of the house between the remnants of Mulch Mountain and the street, I looked down and spied a snake slithering along next to my shoe. Had he come from the mulch? Were we going there again? I snapped a quick photo and checked him out on my phone. A harmless rat snake. 

There was a time in my life, I would have run for a shovel anyway, but those days are gone. I carry flies out of the house. Run down three stories to release spiders. (Not always. If a bug doesn’t cooperate with capture, sometimes it has to go into the light…), because I’m not extreme about anything. I’d say I’m a very medium person. 

But everything seems more sacred now. Although a bit squeamish, I captured the snake in a cardboard box and carried it down to the creek, where I let it go among the kudzu vines, the violet asters, and burgundy coneflowers. The breeze blew up the bank carrying the scent of saltwater and sun. Live long and prosper, snake. 

But I feel bad that whatever was in those eggs didn’t have a chance to live. Although I don’t know how this could be true, I suspect that it is: there isn’t life that doesn’t matter and life that does. Life is diverse in its expression, yet universally holy. Indivisible. And, I’m beginning to believe, somehow conscious.

 As Kate Forster points out, spiders dream, dolphins have accents, otters hold hands, and ants bury their dead. And I’d add, elephants grieve, cephalopods hold grudges, and gray wolves mate for life.

We are islands in an ocean, and it is not the ocean that connects us but the floor of the sea.

I think “if a little is good, more is better” refers only to love and how it shows up in the world. Through you. Through me.

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Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.