Mulch this.

I feel the need to be increasingly controversial and obtuse as the days go by. Naturally, I turned my thoughts to mulch.
Mulch is one of those things that magically appeared, and once it was here we just seemed to accept it as though it belonged here. I look at public trees (as opposed to nature's trees) and wonder, "why do they need the mulch?"
I'm figuring that they really don't need it. I think it is foist upon us by well-meaning (yet greedy) landscapers (another magically appearing item) who told us that it does something good. I wonder what it actually does, since trees grew when I was a kid without mulch and they grow today with it.
What I am left with is the feeling that we are being sold something that is basically useless, yet we are told it belongs here, and we accept it.
Like the Republicans.