Last weekend I was helping out at a community service project.  We were doing yard work at a women’s shelter.  The yard was scruffy but not in too bad a condition.  We cleaned up a playground for the kids out back, and trimmed several bushes and trees in the front yard.  Someone came up with the idea of mulching the spaces around the trees.  We trucked down to a nearby Lowes and spread several bags of nice, red pine bark mulch.

Which got me thinking about mulch.  How great is mulch!  Mulch is one of those things in life that is relatively easy to deal with, and just makes everything better.   If you think about it, there’s not a long list of items like that.  You take mulch out of its container, spread it around, and suddenly the landscape looks and smells great.  After mulching, the sun shines on an immaculate-looking yard, and a pleasant pine aroma wafts in the gentle breeze.  A yard with mulch appears professional and regal, even when the mulch is applied by commoners. 

What if there were additional applications of mulch?  I was looking at the bedroom of my charming, talented, beautiful, smart teenage daughter.  Maybe I can go to Lowes and purchase bedroom mulch.  I would buy a few bags, spread it around and suddenly the space would be transformed into a tidy, shining landscape, with a pleasant pine-scented aroma.