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Speed Cleaning the Garden

© Barbara M. Martin

Please note: Thank you for visiting my Cottage Garden topic and reading my columns, published here from February 1997 through spring 2003! This Cottage Garden column was written by Barbara M. Martin and is Copyrighted, including any photos, by Barbara M. Martin. It may not be altered or copied or published elsewhere in whole or in part without specific permission from the author. I regret I am no longer actively editing or contributing to this suite101.com topic as of mid-2003. Happy Gardening!

We are always in a hurry to get done faster. Do you know the rules of "speed cleaning"? The first one is: "MAKE EVERY MOVE COUNT."

Originally developed for commercial housecleaning teams, the indoor speed cleaning rules were later adapted for homeowner or family use and popularized in a book. Many years ago I read that book and found it useful in speeding up what has to be my least favorite task in the entire world: housecleaning.

(Here are THE RULES in case you have yet to develop a satisfactory system of your own.) "PAY ATTENTION" is one of the rules, too.

Now garden cleaning is a little bit different from housecleaning, but not all that much different. The above speed cleaning rules would work just fine, I know it. There is a quicker way and a slower way to do garden cleaning. The slow way is my typical lollygag around the jungle that is my yard.

Poke at a sprout here and a shoot there, stop and admire a little bloom here, a swelling bud there. Set down the tool in your hand, wander off to examine something else on the way to doing a vague something else you will forget before you are halfway there to wherever it was you were headed. It is mesmerizing. You become feckless and abandon your coffee cup. It is a stream of consciousness parade through oblivion, a wonderful putter of a dreamy afternoon.

I hear the birds, I recognize each one and I know where both pairs of cardinals live. I have not seen the orioles yet, I hope they come back again this year. I see the flash of the bluebird and startle the morning doves; the picky little seed-eating juncos peer at me from the still bare branches of the mimosa tree. They have tiny eyes. I am interrupting!

I know where the earliest bulbs are blooming and where the chionodoxa have seeded themselves this time. I know where the sweet woodruff has spread. And I know exactly how many hydrangea cuttings survived in their pots. I am admiring the progress of the spectacular fungus attacking the maple tree that split and crashed down three years ago in a terrible summer wind storm. I am still glad it missed the house. I note the poison ivy vine that clung to it is still alive -- and clinging.

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