Sometimes deadlines make you neurotic. Other times, they help you get focused. I am choosing the latter course, because I want a good-looking garden before Memorial Day. The problem—for the past week wet weather and at least one blast of high wind have made the garden soggy, riddled with opportunistic weeds and full, once again, of downed sticks and debris. After the wild winter and early spring storms, you might suppose that the trees had nothing left to shake loose, but apparently not.
The grass is also too long and the shrubs have all had epic growth spurts.
Between now and the first holiday of summer, I have about a week’s time, including one weekend. Within that span of days, the amount of daylight hours available for gardening comes out to about eight. The weekend forecast calls for additional wet weather, which means that it might be considerably less trouble to turn the entire landscape into a water garden.
But I like my current plants and my vision of the garden in its ideal state, so I persist in planning ways to shape things up quickly.
Perfection is not attainable, even if I had all the time in the world. I am a “Type A” personality, so the biggest threat to achieving my goals is setting the bar ever higher as I progress towards them. When you sow the seeds of perfectionism; you are certain to reap headaches. In the time it takes you to seek various forms of pain relief, the weeds will be plotting their return. Keeping that in mind, I will aim to do my very best within the available time.
All the really efficient people say, “You have to have a plan,’ so I will make one. Apportioning time correctly is critical. I could simply divide the landscape into four equal parts: back, front and sides of the house, but this does not reflect the kinds of work that need to be done. A better way might be to create lists of specific tasks and then allot the amount of time each one might require.
Eight hours amounts to 480 minutes. Divided by the six task categories that I have identified, the available time adds up to 80 minutes per category. That break-down makes the entire project seem much more do-able. Of course, I have confined my calculations to time spent in the garden and excluded the 45 minutes needed to go to the garden center and buy several bags of mulch. I am hoping that I can delegate that task to my daughter, though she knows nothing about it yet.
The list shakes out as follows:
Mowing and trimming: My front lawn is blessedly small and the rear one almost non-existent. Still, it takes time to mow and string-trim the edges, especially when the grass is too long. I will not moan about the fact that this is not my fault. Instead I will wait until the ground and grass are at least somewhat dry and get going. The time allotment may be a little too generous for this, but if so, I will devote the extra time to one of the other categories.
Shrub pruning: The spring-flowering shrubs and small trees have now flowered and dropped petals everywhere. It is time to prune them back. My evergreen hollies are monstrous enough to be tended by the tree service, but the house needs painting this summer, so I will do at least rudimentary pruning myself. Fortunately, I can leave the incredibly fecund roses-of-Sharon to their own devices, because they bloom in summer. Grubbing out their hundreds of offspring will fall under “Weeding”.
Weeding: In short, weeds are everywhere. Dandelions have reared their golden heads and the onion grass is coming to full maturity. Both reproduce overnight. It is time to get the spring weeds out before the summer crabgrass sidles in.
Eradicating English Ivy and maple seedlings: I could spend the entire eight hours on this, making the time constraint is a blessing in disguise. Every year I worry about the maple tree in front of the house and it rewards my thoughtfulness by dropping thousands of seedlings, with a germination rate of about 110 percent. The seedlings are in the hedges, the beds, the sidewalk cracks and anywhere else that harbors even a speck of dirt.
Mulching: I ordered a quantity of landscape fabric two weeks ago. Now it rests on my back porch, waiting to be cut, and laid down on paths and other places that should be weed and trouble-free. Once I get to the garden center and pick up the mulch, I will be ready to go. Even if this takes the full 80 minute time allotment, it will save precious hours in the future.
General Clean-Up (including planting): My porch is home to one flat each of coleus and bedding dahlias, a box of dahlia tubers and a trio of unplanted perennials. In the dining room, awaiting outdoor relocation, are some rooted spiderwort cuttings and several overwintered geraniums. Adding in the time necessary to bundle more sticks, clean the debris off the sides of the driveway and complete tidying chores that are not elsewhere classified, I will be hard-pressed to finish everything in 80 minutes.
Is my “glorious garden in eight hours” scheme even remotely do-able? Being an optimist and not having started yet, I think so. The plan mapped is out and divided into manageable pieces, which makes it more likely. I will report back next week.