Pull Your Weeds 🌾

It’s been a while, I know. Here’s the truth…I got overwhelmed with life. Once my college kids moved home and the house became like a bustling train station again, I lost my routine and my creativity. The longer I waited, the less I wanted to write. Can you relate?

My health has also been an issue. It’s not really anything specific, but a bunch of annoyances that accompany my current season of the “M” word, such as weight gain, joint pain, and poor sleep. I plan to address these issues in future newsletters for all of you in, or nearing that same “season”.

I love to garden. I love getting my hands dirty and staying out all day with No Shoes Radio on XM playing on my Bluetooth speaker. There’s nothing like being out in the sun, and imagining you’re on a sailboat in the Caribbean, sipping a tropical libation. It’s the next best thing to being there. I know, it’s a stretch.

One thing I don’t love about gardening is thistle weeds. They are ugly, prickly little boogers, and I had hundreds of them. I had no idea that when I pulled them all out a couple of months ago, I was propagating them!

Their root system grows horizontally underground, so that all the ugly, prickly thistles are connected. Pulling them up (seemingly from the root) only breaks them, creating more. So, like my newsletter, I procrastinated. I walked by this one flower bed by my front door every day, feeling the pressure of this chore hanging over my head.

I had researched how to get rid of them for good without the use of toxic substances, and here’s what I found out. I had to dig deep enough to find the transverse root system and pull out all of that along with the weeds.

Finally last weekend, I decided to go to war with the thistle. I turned on my music, donned my old running shoes and gloves, grabbed the pitchfork, and went to work. It took me four hours, but I did it.

I turned up all the soil, ruining all my mulch, and meticulously extracted the weeds and root system. In one instance, I pulled a whole string of 5! I think I may have grunted in a victory call. It was that gratifying! Though, I couldn’t straighten my back for 12 hours. 😩

I did a lot of thinking during that time. I thought a lot about weeds. They took over my garden. They were choking out some of my good plants.

Weeds are a metaphor for our lives too. What are the weeds that take over, preventing us from a well-organized life or routine? Is it scrolling on our phones? Snacking mindlessly? Toxic thoughts? Gossip? I am guilty of all the above.

But like the thistle, maybe we need to get to the root of the problem and be willing to dig things up a bit even if it creates a temporary disturbance in the big picture.

Maybe it’s time to roll up your sleeves and dig around for the answers. It could be loneliness, lack of direction, poor boundaries, low self-worth, improper sleep hygiene or poor diet.

If you want to clean up your garden, there’s no better time than the beginning of the school year.

Schedule a free discovery call with me to help you identify the weeds and design a plan to uproot those things that are no longer serving you.