Can We Talk 2

Weeding

         Today I watered my plants on the back porch. We discovered the reason two flower boxes were fading and looking so terrible was that the squirrel sits in the pot and gnaws the showy flower. The ones leaning over he doesn't like but he's squishing them with his behind. The dying ones he's eating. I water the pots any way.

         I discovered there are weeds in my chives. I've kept all the other pots clean, but I missed these. The chives are long and thin. This weed is long and thin, unlike other weeds that flower or have rounded leaves. The chives grow in clumps, so the weeds nestled up in between the blades and I missed them. So I followed them to their bases and yanked them up, roots and all. It's the only way to get rid of weeds.

         The sun was blazing hot and burned on my arms as I handled the chives and weeds. I thought this is a little like the weeds in our lives. We're so easily influenced by our sneaky culture. Without realizing it, values that aren't our own and sneaked into our lives and our thinking. habits we don't want have crept into our daily routine. These things we don't really want have found their way into our existence without our noticing. They blend in too easily. It might be something as benign as joining the complainers at work or having snacks with TV. Or swearing in rush hour traffic.

         Even when we wake up and notice the weeds in our lives, they're hard to uproot. Breaking habits is difficult. Changing our thinking is difficult. Self-examination is a lot harder than looking for weeds in a flower box. Yet it is a necessary chore if we want our best "harvest".