Cutting crowns
That poor tree. (Photo by Justin Wilkens)
When I first moved into my house in the Reynoldstown neighborhood of Atlanta, it was late winter.
Therefore, I had no way of identifying the vines that crisscrossed the backyard all the way to the deck.
I might have known, however. When things began to leaf out a few weeks later, I realized that I was dealing with kudzu, a non-native plant known as "the vine that ate the South." This enthusiastically invasive species can grow several inches a day, climb telephone poles, and engulf wide stretches of open land. Boy, this would be fun.
I did some research and discovered that it was possible to totally eradicate kudzu in a backyard as small as mine. I would have to cut out the "crowns" of the plant — the rhizomes that store nutrients and send out runners.
I got all of the necessary tools and set to work. I gave it about an hour a day. I would simply walk out to the backyard, look for kudzu leaves, and cut out the crowns I found there. I put the crowns on the deck in a pile that grew pleasantly large as the weeks went by.
While I struggle with long-range planning and structuring of projects, my kudzu eradication project is an example of a project style that tends to work pretty well for me: Start a thing, and then keep going until it is done. There are a few things that made it work.
No second-guessing. I didn't question whether it was a good idea to get rid of the kudzu. I treated it as a given and didn't waste any energy wondering whether cutting up kudzu crowns was a good use of my time.
A willingness to start small. I didn't overthink the work at hand. Any crown that I cut out of the soil was one less hub from which kudzu could proliferate. Any work that I did would be a meaningful contribution to the end goal. That meant that ten or fifteen minutes could be well spent in service to the removal effort.
A willingness to be imperfect. There was no grand plan I needed to follow. I didn't have to divide the yard into sectors, get the most expensive tools, or set aside entire days to do the work. I could figure things out as I went along.
Appreciation for the effort along the way. That growing pile of ugly, hacked-up rhizomes was my measure of progress even when it seemed like I would never get to the end of the kudzu that kept cropping up. I could see the clear evidence of the work I had done even when it was tempting to dismiss the whole project as hopeless.
Eventually, I stopped finding kudzu leaves. Other weeds took over, but the kudzu had been eliminated. To maintain my kudzu-free backyard, I just had to cut any runners that had come under the fence from the neighbor's yard. I had won the battle.
More complex planning is necessary sometimes. However, there are also times when the exact nature of the plan isn't as important as getting it done without a fuss. The goal wasn't to find the best possible way to eradicate kudzu from my yard or to develop a model for others to follow. There weren't going to be extra points for style or effort. All I really cared about was improvement from day to day, and that's what kept me going.
Sometimes, projects get bigger in our minds than they deserve to be. They become so idealized and precious that we want to launch them with a fancy ribbon-cutting or ground-breaking ceremony. However, if we can lower the stakes and start where we are, we stand a much better chance of ultimately achieving what we're hoping for.
If you've got literal or metaphorical kudzu in your life, you might start by cutting a few crowns you can easily see. Tomorrow, do a few more, and the next day, too. Gradually, you'll gain some ground you can be proud of.
