Weeding... Again

After a busy week, with little extra time for things like the garden, I was greeted today by... those same old weeds. Back again.

Remembering the lessons I learned the last time I really cogitated on the act of weeding, I surrendered to the task at hand.

Considering I had not kept up my daily maintenance, it was a large task indeed. Just about every surface was covered in some kind of little sprouts of grass, prickly thistles, maple trees, and goodness-knows-what-else. In addition to the weeds, the raspberries, which are fine as long as they stay on their own side of the netting, were working their way through. The squash plants were getting a little too friendly with the tomato plants, hugging them with their grabby tendrils and choking them.


It was horticultural anarchy.

I needed to restore some order here. After separating and rearranging the good plants, I began the actual weeding.

As I was working, I noticed that this was different than my last major weeding project. The plants were much bigger and healthier, and it was easy to tell them from the weeds. So while it was still work, it didn't really require all that much thought or decision-making. Plants were plants, weeds were weeds. The difference was obvious.


And again, it reminded me of life. (Weeding is not that interesting for me. I have to think about something to pass the time!)

As we fill our gardens and our lives with Healthy Stuff, and that Healthy Stuff takes root and grows and takes up more space, the weeds that would choke that healthy growth are easier to identify and remove. The negative thoughts that hold us back, the messages that we're not good enough, the hurts and rejections, the bad habits and time-wasters... they're all weeds that we can see more easily for what they are in a garden filled with a variety of healthy plants.


It was one of those insights I was eager to share with the Teen, who has taken up meditation recently. When I came in, I tried to share these insights and describe how today weeding was my meditative act.

He, of course, thought this was hilarious, and spent the next 5 minutes or so mocking the idea of weeding as meditation. But he's fifteen - I guess that's his job. Fortunately for me, I have fairly low expectations of myself as a writer/philosopher/Zen master and also fairly thick skin. :-) The little weed of his rejection: Pulled and Tossed.

Maybe he'll have a texting lull and will read this blog post in a fit of boredom.