With a yard like mine, one looks outside and right away sees something that ought to be “gardened.” Swoop down, determined to put an end to the big dandelion, the patch of stinky bob, the dead rhododendron, whatever I see, wherever I happen to be.
Can’t do that at my gardening job. That’s a job where I am not the boss. Several people above me are the bosses, and the job is at a 9-acre park, visited by multitudes every day. The park has its more popular, populated spots, with their particular landscape issues. The park has me as an employee, responsible to explore its width and length, height and depth, every day, with a critical eye to spot issues immediate and critical, subtle and less consequential.
Before choosing a particular problem to tackle, the whole park has to be looked over so priorities can be assigned.
A particular task– eradication of a caterpillar nest on a branch of garry oak– might be quickly accomplished. Another task– removing the vetch from the kinnickinick– might be ongoing.
Certain tasks might need rethinking. What is to be done with dandelions? If one is committed to non-chemical means of weed control, and one has a large space, limited time, limited labor, and competing priorities, maybe one has to accept that at any given time, a certain number of dandelions will be there in the lawn.
Dandelions are never going to renounce their claim to my yard. They will show up in force every year, in their baffling variety. I can commit myself to attempting to dig out the taproot of every single one– or, I can allow the yellow blooms one day in the Sun, then pluck ’em and spend my limited time elsewhere on less-futile activities.
If one has smaller sections of particular lawns that are not cut short and micro-managed, lawns with high-growing grasses, trees, and shrubs, perhaps one can simply pluck the dandelion flowers as they bloom, and elsewhere, do the same. Then one has the peculiar lawn that has dandelions, but not blooming ones, so the dandelions seem like a strange type of grass.
Establish the time limit, look over the entire yard, or section of yard to work on, focus on the biggest things, then work down to the smallest things.
Why spend an hour on a minor thing when a bigger problem could have been handled, had one taken the time to look over the whole yard?
Why spend three hours to halfway finish a job in the back when one could spend an hour finishing a job in the front?
Sometimes, you want to make the yard look better. Sometimes, you just want to deal with something that’s bothering you.
Nowadays, one always has to ask– is it good for the bees?