Garden of Weedin'

WEEDS!!!!  My garden would look so much better without them.  They are uninvited guests to my party.  Some say that weeds are just flowers nobody wants or they are flowers that haven’t been cultivated.  Fine, but they’re still weeds to me.  If it weren’t for them, I could reduce my garden work to pruning and watering.  

The worst offender is something called Creeping Charlie.  It has small leaves; they range in size from about a nickel to quarter.  “Big deal”, you say, “What’s the problem with a nickel size weed?”  The problem is that it clones itself every inch or so, sending out runners in every direction.  The runners set-down roots every three to four inches.  As the runners begin to crisscross each other, they form a thick mat which kills off all other growth.

 

Like most weeds, if you don’t get the roots, the weed comes back.  So, it’s possible to pull on all the runners, and miss the roots.  In addition, Creeping Charlie likes to hide at the base of other plants.  You can get all the visible runners and roots, only to have the hidden Creeping Charlie send out runners in days.

Toss in all the other possible weeds, and they can over-run a garden very quickly.  They get a head-start, in the cooler, wet weather, before most gardeners are even interested in being outside.  They continue to flourish during the “monsoons” we get here in the Midwest.  The weeds grow, while I’m trying to stay dry; totally unfair!!!!

 

Okay, so what do weeds have to do with Lessons from the Garden?  Weeds, like bad habits and bad attitudes, don’t wait to be invited in; they just show-up.  They invade in every direction, moving in, taking over.  Like Creeping Charlie, they can hide at the base of our intentions and actions, without our even noticing the impact they are having.

I doubt most children dreamt of finding ways to screw-up their adult lives.  Yet, we can start to take on attitudes and habits fairly young which start altering the course of our lives.  Those attitudes/habits might be “transplanted” by family, friends, education (or lack-there-of) even our entertainment.  There are a myriad influences washing over us.

As an example, take smoking.  Most of us have heard since we were very young, of the harmful effects of smoking cigarettes.  Nonetheless, how many new smokers are added to the ranks each day?  What percentage of the adults wish they had never picked-up the habit in the first place?  My guess is that the vast majority of smokers never foresaw the impact that first puff would have on their health, and self-esteem.  

If you’re a smoker, or can easily ID a bad habit in your life; what got you there?  Was it the influence of a friend or peer group?  Was it something you thought you could control; now it controls you?

Self-examination and evaluation of our attitudes is an even more difficult task than overt habits.  We can dismiss our unproductive mindsets by comparing ourselves to our perception of those around us.  “I’m doing much better than most of the people I know”.  “Sure, I’ve got a bad attitude, but I’ll never carry it to the extreme like so-and-so has”.

Lousy attitudes can cost us employment, or advancement, impact relationships, limit our horizons, or tell us a situation is hopeless, and take the wind out of our sails.

The fictional country in TEN DAYS suffers from the results of attitudes and thought patterns embraced and accepted in the country for years.  Some of those ways of viewing life were like weeds, choking-out opposing views, and warping the values which they once held dear. 

Getting my garden clear of weeds takes hours, days, or weeks of hard work, and vigilance to keep it from being over-run.  Isn’t the man I’m becoming or the person you’re becoming worth more than any garden?  Yes; we’re always in the state “of becoming”, always going through a process of change.  We need to keep on the look-out for the weeds which can ruin the garden of our lives.