Philosophy 19

We’ve reached that time of year (Autumn, or Fall if you prefer the American term) when I’m reminded that tending a garden is like tending an Oracle database.

This is a picture of the oak tree on my front lawn, taken about 4 hours ago. Looking at it now it shows hardly any sign of the coming winter and little of the colour that let’s you know it’s preparing to drop its huge volume of leaves, but yesterday morning I spent the best part of an hour raking up leaves that had dropped over the course of the previous week.

Over the next six weeks, I’ll be out be out with my leaf rake every few days to clean up the mess – and I’ll look down at the mess that’s on the ground, then look up at the mess that’s waiting to join it, and then I’ll do just enough work to make the lawn look just good enough to keep my wife happy for a few more days until I get sent out to do it all over again.

You can spot the analogy, of course – it’s important to think about how much effort it’s worth spending to get to an end result which is good enough for long enough. There’s no point in spending a huge amount of effort getting a fantastic result that is going to be obliterated almost immediately by the next problem that gets dumped in your lap. When the tree is nearly bare, I’ll do a thorough job of clearing the leaves, until then, 95% is easy enough, and good enough.

Footnote: avid arboriculturalists might wonder why the tree is lop-sided – being a little light on the side towards the road – it’s the sort of thing that happens when a tree gets hit by a lorry.