With the help of Kevin, the kids, and visiting Uncle Jed, I’ve finally finished clean-up on the front garden. It takes me a few weeks, because I can only spare about 15-30 minutes / day most days. I could pay someone to clean it up, but my garden is full of unusual early spring bulbs that are quite fragile, and I don’t want random garden people stomping all over them.
Plus, it’s actually one of my favorite garden jobs — it feels like getting little presents every day in early spring, clearing up another section, pruning back anything unwanted, clipping away aged hellebore leaves, finding snowdrops and little species crocuses buried under the leaves.
But don’t feel like you need to do yard clean-up this early, even if your neighbors are neatniks. If I didn’t plant such early little flowers, I would leave it all a little longer, and in fact, I haven’t touched anything in the back garden yet. We just hit 53F daytime temp today; the general recommendation for best pollinator survival is waiting until daytime temperatures are consistently above 50F for at least 7 consecutive days before you get out in the garden for spring maintenance.
But it’s going to take me two weeks to clean-up the back garden too, given how much time I can spare for it most days, so I need to spread this task out over a month. I’ll be starting on the back tomorrow, and do it in little sections, bit by bit. I’m piling the bulk of the leaf mulch and twig trimmings in a corner of the back garden for now, which will hopefully given any sleeping pollinators in there a little longer to emerge. There’ll be time to put it all in the Village compost bin in a few weeks — or rather, make my kids do it. 
And after that, the mulching…
Don’t forget to save any flowers that might have had their stems broken by wind — you can put them in a vase and enjoy them, or press them for craft projects. And if you have interesting dried seed pods, then you can save those for crafting, or for seasonal decor — these black baptisia pods will look great in a Halloween vase.