Careful What You Mulch

It was early spring, and in an unprecedented way, debris fell hourly from our trees around our yard. I raked it up, but not wanting to simply toss the natural stuff, I moved some of the river rocks in our landscaping, and swept it under the ground cover mat in a low spot of our front yard.

A couple weeks later, I noticed the rocks rolled away and the mat domed up. It was extremely spooky. I was thinking rabbit hole, skunk, snake pit, dead neighbor.

I grabbed a shovel and carefully lifted a corner. I discovered hundreds -- no, more like thousands -- of baby sprouted trees pushing upward from their warm, dark "nursery" under the mat. I "rearranged" the baby trees, killing them all. However, those sprouts made for even more mulch. So why do I feel like a murderer when I know that none of them would have survived, anyway?