Do Trees Make The Wind Blow?

The trees in this area are currently ablaze in all their deciduous glory. I can't help but to stare up at the reds and oranges, maroons and crisp yellows set dynamically against the clear blue sky.

Something else has caught my attention and, unfortunately, I must depart the wonder of this pumpkin-scented autumn to question the mountains of mulch.

Every tree in my pristine suburbia is laced at the ground with a fluffy bed of cypress mulch. The dark brown circles each tree in a shadowy circumference like the dot of an exclamation point. It's not just the delicate, non-native trees that are blanketed in the smelly shreds of former forest flesh. It is also the mighty oaks, hickories and maples indigenous to the naturally beautiful terrain. Nature now pushed behind the boundaries of this plastic paradise.

How did this happen? Has this practice been D.I.Y.ed into normalcy?

Cypress mulch is stinky, using it depletes natural cypress forests turning them into wastelands and it is usually covered in non-native fungi that spot the leaves of the very trees it supposedly protects. Then, mulch-lovers have to re-pile again next season.

I'm not an activist, nor do I have a personal vendetta against mulch. It's just that when I was a kid trees simply grew out of the ground. I just wondered if they still can.