A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter M

mulch

Farming
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Mulch is material spread over soil to retain moisture, suppress weeds, protect roots, and improve fertility.

Detailed Definition
Mulch may consist of straw, leaves, compost, bark, or other organic and manufactured materials laid around crops. It protects the soil surface, conserves water, moderates temperature, and gradually enriches the earth as organic matter decays. In poetry, mulch is less traditional than seed or harvest, but it offers a potent image of concealment, protection, and transformation. Dead material becomes nourishment for new life, making mulch a metaphor for memory, grief, decay, and the hidden processes by which renewal is made possible.
Example
Example in poetry:
Mulch covering bare soil can symbolise protection and hidden preparation; Leaves decaying into mulch may represent death transformed into nourishment; A gardener spreading mulch can illustrate patient care for future growth; Poets may compare buried memories with mulch that quietly enriches later experience.
Additional Notes
Mulch is spread on the soil surface rather than dug deeply into it. Organic materials such as straw, leaves, bark, or compost conserve moisture, suppress weeds, regulate temperature, and gradually enrich the ground. In poetry, mulch can suggest protection, concealment, and dead matter nourishing new life. It is more common in modern environmental writing than traditional pastoral verse. Related terms include compost, straw, leaf mould, soil, moisture, weed control, decay, and fertility.
Also Known As
mulching material litter
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