Life's weeds

Today I was outside with the kids, taking advantage of this beautiful, cool weather. I started looking around my yard and noticed some weeds popping up from the rains we've had. I bent over and yanked the ugly thing out, and threw it in the garbage can out front.

Then I started yanking all the little buggers out, and the more I pulled, the more I noticed. Some behind the hibiscus tree, more over in the flower bed, a whole colony by the mailbox.

I was kind of surprised because I had just done this less then a month ago, and the weeds had already come back!

My mom walked by with her Golden Retriever Molly... and saw me doing the yard work. I complained to her about how they had all came back so quickly.

She reminded me that pulling weeds is something that should be done often.. even every other day if you don't want it to get out of control. She said, "When you go to the mail box to get your load of bills, pull some there. When you go to the hose to wash the sand off the kids, pull some there...then it won't get unmanageable."

I thought about it and she was right, its really the same thing with all tasks... leave them go, and they get out of control.

Now the thing with weeds, is that if they are not pulled often enough, they will take all the good soil, nutrients, and water that you want your specimen plants to have.

Weeds have this tendency to grow thick, some have very deep root systems, they spread, have thorns, cause skin irritation and make allergy's worse. Really they are good for nothing but destruction of the garden you worked so hard on.

Then after the weeds where gone, I decided to remove some old dead bushes, transplant some flowers, make the flower bed look nicer. I mulched to make the soil better and retain water for my plants, I placed them at certain angels to display their best sides.

When I was done, I stood back and looked at it. What was before some dead bushes and a bunch of weeds was now a very pretty entry garden. I felt good looking at it... I felt... accomplished!

Being the type of person I am, which is the type that looks to deeply at everything, when I should just be enjoying myself, an interesting thought came to me.

These weeds are a lot like life's problems. Would it not be amazing if our lives where like a garden and we could just yank out life's weeds?

Smoking habit? Pull it out and burn it! Fight with the hubby? Yank that sucker and and plant a rose bush. Kids fighting again? Pull that weed right out and plant a peace lilly.

Life is for sure not that easy! But there is a lesson we can learn from gardening to improve our lives and keep them from becoming unmanageable.

Letting those weeds go for so long, the old weeds had had time to reseed and spread. See most the time, you cant really ever get rid of a weed, they are invasive plants. They reseed and flourish so quickly. Plus they are sneaky, they come in with that bag of mulch you bought from Home Depot, or that bird that flew by, or that new flower you picked up at the nursery.

In our life, weeds will always be there and will always be ready to take over the beautiful things we have. As gardeners of our own lives, bodies, minds... we need to make sure we take the time daily, either though prayer or meditation to ask Gods help in removing these weeds from our life so we don't end up with a life that resembles that house in foreclose down the street, ya know... the one with the 5 foot grass and ivy taking over the place.

Try to come to terms with the fact that these weeds are a part of the landscape. They will always be there and they will always require your attention. The part you have control over is whether or not you put in the time and energy to keep them manageable.

Oh, and don't ever feel bad if you do have the oppruntity to yank a few of the bad ones out and throw them in the trash... its just a better chance of less weeds tomorrow.

Go to the local nursery, buy yourself a beautiful lilac bush and put it where the weed was. Replacing the negative with positive beauty has never done anything but make a girl smile :)