Love Those Wide Open Spaces: The County Conducts Spring Cleaning

Animal den along road is now out in the open

Like most of Florida, our roads are lined with drainage gullies to help in times of rain.

But not living directly in the swamp, our ditches are filled with wildflowers, not water, nearly all year ‘round.

The county maintains the road and its ditches and clearances and they do a good job.

The right-of-ways are kept mown, drainage pipes replaced when needed, and maintenance crews come in to clean and repair every 3 months or so.

Yesterday, the county began their annual Spring Cleaning Season by sending a drainage ditch cleaner to our road. I didn’t think much about it as I casually watched him cutting from the window beside my desk.

It’s always good to know the infrastructure is being well maintained and we’ll be set to handle run-off during the hurricane season.

But later that afternoon as I went for the mail, I got a good look….or perhaps I should say a bad look...at the work that was done.

Our county mow-master performed his job so well, paid so much attention to detail, was so thorough, that there was no living greenery left along the road anymore except a few cabbage palms shading the ditch from inside the pastures and safely behind the fences.

There were no bushes anywhere. There were no vines climbing up over the fence posts. There were no wildflowers left to bloom. There was no habitat left for wildlife. He clean-cut the place. And boy, this man was on a mission!

I know everything will grow back in the months ahead. I know that elsewhere in Florida this guy would be a super-star. (Golf course managers would salivate at his work!)

But here, out in the country, nature denuded makes my head hurt.

- Sanne Collins

From the Ranch in Florida

What’s Been Keeping Me Busy Lately

Love Those Wide Open Spaces is a blog designed to follow my daily life as a freelance writer and rancher. It’s a life full of constant change and a wide scope of interests.

Freelance writing, by its definition, requires the ability to write on a variety of subjects, to juggle many assignments during the times of plenty, and to fill the void when checks are slow. That said, I’m always writing.

Much of my work is done for others such as corporations, websites, or articles penned under another’s name. I’ve sold the rights to these works, so they can’t be shared.

However, many of my projects are available under my own name and can be read right here on the web.

You can click on either the site or the story below to see them.

Check out what’s been keeping me busy lately!