On Matters of Brooms and Sweeping

The title of this blog has left some, maybe more than some, maybe many, has left people wondering about the significance, if any, of sweeping yards. 

Sweeping is an old custom and for many people a lost skill. Done properly, sweeping creates a mood, a feel, a culmination of well-put effort. Done poorly, sweeping leaves a mess and causes people to reach for the medicine cabinet.

Time was, and not so long ago, sweeping, sweeping with a broom I am speaking of, was an indoor skill (please do not mention "indoor" and "yard" and such--all in due course) that would make quick work of tidying things. Patent offices worldwide must have millions, maybe billions, of replacements for the broom and for the act of sweeping. Some of the claimed replacements are plain silly. Racking my brain I find no replacement of the broom as pleasing as the broom. 

Swish is nice. Swish is more agreeable to the ear than vroom. Vroom. Need I describe? Of course not. You agree even if you sell Electrolux door-to-door. I am not sure that anybody does that anymore. 

I have never tripped over the cord of a broom and my limbs are less broken than otherwise they might be for the absence of a broom cord. Life is full of things nobler than to have broken one's bones for a Hoover. 

I fear I stray. That's okay. My cat does the same thing, though with more grace. 

If I stray it is because I am more interested in the beauty of the form and choreography of the broom and sweeping than I am in the lore that has grown up around sweeping. And that, now that I begin to unstray, is where I began writing this. Broom and sweeping lore is plentiful. Maybe some of it is useful. Maybe. I read in Shelby County Today a piece by Neal Murphy called "Broom Lore and Old Wives Tales." I recommend it if you have time and you will have time if you simply give up on trying to get the cord to retract. 

Timely to the season is this advice, "To prevent an unwelcome guest from returning, sweep out the room they stayed in immediately after they leave." Done. We may have missed this chance. "Do not sweep at all using a broom on New Year’s Day or bad luck will follow you all year long." I am safe. 

Advice and admonitions abound. Enjoy. And one day I will tell you about the title of this blog. Actually, I already have, at least partially, doing a little is better than doing nothing at all, but the description is so far back that you probably cannot find it. Don't fret. That is almost as bad as leaving the broom leaning against the bed. 

 

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness and came and sat down under a broom tree. And he asked that he might die, saying, "It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my fathers.

Kings something 

Meditation 

Obedience

 

I sold that snapshot. I am sorry. It is a good one and a fine moral lesson. I should have kept the photograph and tacked it above my desk as a reminder and guilt-inducer to stay on track with my tasks. 

And this weekend, last one in March 2024, I discovered that I had a second copy. 

October: Time to Propagate Roses!

October is the month for rose bush propagation. And helping rose bushes multiply is easy. Look for a cane of goodly diameter, large enough that you will be able to push it or hammer it into the soil without the stem breaking, and yank the stem from the bush with enough violence that you pull a strip of bark from the mother branch. 

Flat cut the branch 4-5 inches above the tear (being certain to leave 2-3 stem segments between top and bottom).

Poke the branch, rip end down, into the earth. If need be, gently hammer the flat top of the stem to help the sinking.

(If the earth is hard, place a gallon plastic jug of water over the spot where you want to sink the stem. Make a small hole in the bottom of the jug and allow the water to seep into the earth and soften it).

Push the stem into the earth so that the earth remains compact around the stem (that is, do not dig a whole or poke a hole with a tool). 

Walk away. Forget about the bush-to-be until spring. 

While you have forgotten, the stem will summon energy to repair the damage and part of the energy will go to root creation. 

After a spell of warm days in the spring you should notice some growth beginning and the growth will continue until you have a nice new bush. 

If you do not see growth in the spring then you failed. Better luck next time.

Sweeping the Yard and Pulling the Sprouts

This is what my mother told me about a family obligation to take care of the yard during the time when she was growing up. The yard of the house was neat and cared for by sweeping leaves, twigs, or anything else from the yard to some other place. I forgot to ask where the other place was. Anyway, in addition to sweeping, everybody in the family understood that they shared a duty to pluck any growing thing that appeared in the ground. A blade of grass stood no chance. The yard was a point of pride.

The swept yard should not be imagined a field of dust. With care, the dirt was compacted by use. The yard usually had a tree and under the shade of tree a family spent time in the yard, the coolest domestic space available during long, hot southern summers. With her usual grace, Sharon Astyk describes the beauty and utility of a living, used packed-earth living space. 

Instead of attempting to grow grass or other ground covers in the hot south often on red clay, rural southerners would sweep and tamp down that clay until it baked hard as a rock, reducing dust tracking and making the space suitable for yard work. Houses, hot during the day, were abandoned and people moved outside to shaded yards where they could do the washing, cook, eat, butcher animals, and do other heavy work in the shade of trees.

I remember as a child our house in the city had a sparse front yard. The yard had patches of growth but it also had bare spots. Two large oak trees shaded the yard and maybe whatever grass the yard had could not compete with the oaks. 

Eventually the front yard was lush with St. Augustine grass. But that's another story.