Mulch Ado About Nothing

Mulch. Ugh. The word is guttural and makes you sneer when you say it. "Mulch" {sneer}

I got it in my head one day that I hated mulch and comfortably waved an anti-mulch banner for years. It makes it hard to rake leaves and gives you splinters. When you want to plant something you have to move the mess out of the way. It is not comfortable to walk atop with bare feet, and I almost always have bare feet. These were my reasons for hating it so.

But...

I was staring the pictures from the last post, thinking that something just didn't seem right. The garden seemed haphazard and lacked a certain luster even though there were blooms. It must be the weeds, I thought, so the next day, I cleared out anything I hadn't planted. Though it was a marked improvement (and surprisingly relaxing), it still needed something.

My coworkers at the nursery are always preaching the finer attributes of mulch, mainly that it helps your plants retain water, keeps roots protected, and deters weeds from popping up. With the weeds freshly cleared, a little voice that sounded a lot like them creeped in and said, "Now's the time to mulch. Dooooo iiiiittt."

So I did. Sixteen bags of shredded bark and one splinter later, the garden is glowing. Everything looks so good. It looks finished, and the colors are popping against the rich brown color of the mulch. Oh my goodness, it happened. I, Shannon, am a reformed anti-mulchest.