Wednesday, September 28, 2011

Weed(ing)

Much of my life these days seems to revolve around my garden. Planting, watering, weeding, harvesting, eating and canning. I am amazed at how much can grow here in the 'Burg. Today we harvested a watermelon from our garden. A first for our family.

My gardening is a bit like my life, entangled and weedy and yummy and beautiful all at the same time. Just some good soil, some seeds, some sunshine and some water. As the gardening season winding down I found myself reflecting on how much gardening is like life. Bear with me here, I promise to try very hard to not be trite about this subject.

Most of us have good soil in our lives - places in which to plant seeds and put down roots. Sometimes though, the place where we plant our seeds is a bit rocky - and not very much sprouts. Sometimes weeds can overtake the fruit we are trying to grow. As a gardener I am trying to learn to be ruthless with weeds. It isn't always easy . . . sometimes the "weed" in my garden is a volunteer plant, like a pumpkin or an onion that has sprouted up from last year's seeds.

Because I hate to kill anything I often let the volunteer plants grow where they sprout up. Sounds nice and organic, right? Yes, but mostly no. The volunteer pumpkin I let grow in the middle of two rows of corn ending up taking over some of my basil. I tried to trim it back a bit at a time, but it kept growing - like Medusa's snake hair. Everytime I cut off a vine in order to give the basil some space and sun, another sneaky pumpkin vine would come along. I should have just pulled out the plant from the beginning.

As a mother, daughter, wife and friend (among many other labels) I have taken the lesson of the volunteer pumpkin plant , which was actually a weed, to heart. Sometimes, in order to let areas of our lives thrive and grow and blossom, we have to ruthlessly cut out the weeds. The weeds that overtake us are sneaky. For me they have mostly come from a desire to help, to be a friend, to step into the void and arrogantly think I can inspire and solve other people's problems. The problem is that my life is so busy with family and gardening that when I take on a new commitment (sometimes under the guise of friendship) that I end up making decisions that aren't based on what is best for my family. Sometimes commitments and friendships are like weeds that choke the life out of us. We can carefully try to trim them bit by bit, but they keep coming back.

I enjoy the friendships that sustain me in my daily life - they are meaningful and provide me with inspiration and motiviation. But, just like my garden I'm learning to be very, very selective about the friendships I choose. Because, sometimes, our friends suck the life right out of us, just like the weeds choke out the fruit in the garden. And that is why I am striving to become a ruthless weeder. To be very, very selective about my friendships and the pressures on my time. At the end of the day I am responsible for sustaining my family and my darling hubby. And I can't do a good job sustaining what I already have if I'm not constantly weeding.

1 comment:

  1. Yes. YES! And because I'm such a chicken, I posted about this very thing here:

    http://skirt.com/nancya/blog/what-we-keep

    instead of on my blog. I am just a bit afraid of backlash, repercussions and mean girls. But you're such a "Keeper" I knew you could handle it.

    BTW- I'm a pumpkin vine, and you can't cut me back no matter how hard you try. ;-)

    Thank you for you honesty.

    ReplyDelete