Short answer is - not at all. You should mulch, as widely as possible, around trees, but no deeper than 4", and NO mulch in the couple of inches around the tree. Putting mulch there has several bad effect. 1) It holds moisture against the trunk, which can lead to rotting down the road. Now, I grant it can be 10-15 years before you see any effect, but I can just about guarantee that it will show up. 2) If the mulch is piled too high and too close to the trunk, then the tree roots can't get the proper air exchange in the soil, and will grow roots up into the mulch. This is bad for several reasons, one being that there is little nutrition in the mulch, and the other, and perhaps more important, is that if the mulch dries out, for whatever reason, then the tree roots also dry out. 3) Since you are in zone5, you get snow in the winter. Mice and voles tend to tunnel through mulch to hide and be warm - if they can be right next to the trunk in comfort, they can nibble on the bark, which does the tree no good. Your neighbor is right that it is bad, although probably not about the reason. Which is not to say that girdling roots won't, eventually, kill a tree, just that too high mulch is not likely as a cause of girdling roots. I don't know why any GOOD landscaper does it, although enough of them do it. It does, as you said, mean that little or no grass grows up against the trunk, and thus doesn't need to be pulled or otherwise dealt with, so makes less work. Another reason may be "that it's the way to do it" (as if tradition is the deciding factor for everything!), and another may be that it's a lot easier than trying to explain, and oversee, an ignorant laborer how to do it right. After all, 10-15 years is long enough not to look for trouble that far down the road; he may not be doing the job at that time; if the tree does, he gets to be paid to remove it and replace it; and trees just die, it's got nothing to do with mulching it high up on the trunk. Yeah, RIGHT!!!!

It's been a month since the pics at the top of this thread, so here's an update, with pics in the same order. There are two plants of each of 3 varieties. Below are the supermarket Thai bird chilies. They might not appear a whole lot different than the first pic, but they have actually grown quite a bit and have been moved from 2" to 4" pots. The problem is that they want to grow tall and narrow, and I want them short to keep them manageable under lights. So I keep clipping, clipping, clipping. One of them had set a lot of flower buds but then the branches rapidly grew taller so I cut all those branches off (except one branch on the left-hand side that wasn't growing as aggressively, where you can see a bud about to bloom): Next are the Thai Sun peppers. These are doing the best, they've flowered and are setting lots of small peppers. They got moved from 2" pots a month ago to 6" pots now: Here's a close up of some of the Thai Sun fruit: Finally, here's the Tobasco peppers, definitely the slowest of the bunch, still in 2" pots like last month. I've pinched these once to force them to bush out, but it looks like they have a naturally bushy form so I probably didn't need to pinch them. Not sure why these are slower, they just are I guess. Cutting down on water, as recommended, seems to have helped them, thanks.

Thanks trailrunner, dad is 74 so I guess that might affect how well he recovers? He is walking around really well, and he gets out of bed and wanders around the ward, although last week he did lose his balance and had to be helped back to bed. After that they moved him to a room right next to the nurses station to keep a closer eye on him but he's back out of bed and wandering around again and so far he's been ok. It's really made me realise how fragile our brains are, like in the past I've been teetering at the top of a ladder painting the outside of our house and I've thought "I hope I don't fall because I'll break a bone or something", but I never even considered a brain injury which would be much worse. I'm so glad to hear you recovered from it, it must be terrible to go through. thanks mitch, he is in good hands and right now it's the best place for him until he gets a bit further along.

Yes, language translations can be very funny! Going with a translate garble, any ideas what would be the stand in for the cheese since babies, children and pets are already listed? It must be just a single source for the warning mislabels, as all of the ones found online look the same. I hope it does not point to the product being counterfeit. Amazon is not very good about policing those, and counterfeits can look convincing. The Amazon seller had excellent ratings, and the socks look to be of good quality. But they are weirdly long in the foot area. I was trying to find a substitute for my favorites, Balega, that now have an absurd $13 per pair price tag.