Mark Lane: The Darwinian Gardener shuffles storm debris

The Darwinian Gardener kicked aside some damp oak branches and warily emerged from his front door. Tropical Storm Ian had just passed. Outside it was still blowy and drizzly, yet already he smelled freshly cut wood and gasoline from power generators up and down the street.

"Damage report, Scotty!" he bellowed and answered his own question. "Communications down. We have no power. Life-support system limited to a single battery-powered fan. Beer supply is unacceptably warm. Roof holding. No external damage or injuries reported."

He scanned the debris scattered about his front yard and assessed the job before him.

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But wait, who is this Darwinian Gardener guy, you ask?

The Darwinian Gardener is Florida's foremost exponent of survival-of-the-fittest lawn-and-garden care. He doesn't have expectations that require a three-person mechanized yard crew to park a trailer full of heavy equipment in the middle of a neighborhood street. No sir.

He's not here to repair a green carpet marred by windstorm. His expectations are modest. In times of natural disaster, he congratulates the survivors and carts the others to the end of the driveway without regret. And in a time of disaster recovery, you could do worse than to put down the chainsaw and Ask the Darwinian Gardener:

Q: Are you paying the price for shoddy yard maintenance by having to clean up all that debris?

A: Not as much as in the past few storms. The Darwinian Gardener recalls with pride how after Hurricane Irma (2017) he had the best and tallest debris pile on the block. And there are a lot of old oaks on his block, so there was some competition.

This year, one arm of a venerable Y-shaped water oak next door split off, taking down power lines and landing with a sound like a mortar. As soon as he saw it, he knew he'd be out of the running this time around. That made for one impressive pile.

In the Darwinian Gardener's yard, things might have gone the same in a storm like this, except that at the start of the year, he had three infirm water oaks taken down, which pained him greatly. Two were twin trees than leaned away from each other perilously in a spindly "V" shape, the other looked stately and solid, but was being drained of life by an infestation of mistletoe.

"It's dead on top," the arborist told him solemnly. Having heard that same assessment leveled at himself, the Darwinian Gardener was at first dubious but paid big bucks to have that tree taken down, too. This week would have seen a much different debris pile if he hadn't.

The Darwinian Gardner shuddered at the thought and contemplated the job ahead. He needed to get a tree limb off the roof, an effort fraught with physical danger, and spend some time doing the yard-debris shuffle.

Q: Just what is this yard-debris shuffle nonsense?

A: The yard-debris shuffle is a technique the Darwinian Gardener perfected over many tropical storms and hurricanes on an oak-shaded lot. A leaf rake doesn't work with larger twigs and snapped-off branch ends. A garden rake gets snarled in the thatch of the grass.

So you move across the yard in a sliding, shuffling motion, not picking your feet up much, until a ball of twigs, vines, Spanish moss, branches and leaves grows in front of you. It's tedious but a good aerobic activity after days of being cooped inside. Add a soundtrack and it might end up on TikTok.

Q: So why didn't you complete the job and make your yard safely free of trees? Tree-huggers create their own dangers.

A: The Darwinian Gardener planted new trees this year. He figures that living among the trees is a problem once or twice every few years whereas the owner of a perfect lawn suffers for it every weekend.

Plus, the Darwinian Gardener feels that his life of unpredictable danger from nature is part of his identity as a Floridian.

Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His email is mlanewrites@gmail.com.

This article originally appeared on The Daytona Beach News-Journal: Hurricane Ian: The Darwinian Gardener does storm debris shuffle