Pull Out The Weeds Or Make Peace With The Dandelions

When we bought our home here in New York, one of the things we (and by we, I mean Susanne) inherited was a garden.

A MASSIVE garden!

Tending the garden that first summer was completely overwhelming for Susanne. However, she did enjoy it and learned a whole lot in the process.

She also discovered that while the previous owner cared for his garden, he did allow weeds to grow free.

As a result, much of the work she did that first summer was discovering and eliminating weeds. Most of her days in the garden were spent pulling weeds, it seemed never ending.

Unfortunately, during this process, she found three very invasive weeds that no garden should welcome.??

One of the invasive weeds was very tricky; in fact, initially, she didn’t realize it was a weed. It had pretty purple blooms growing on it and seemed to blend right in with the rest of the garden.?Before she knew it the blooms were gone and it had completely grown right over a beautiful plant like a canopy; completely covering it.

Left alone, the healthy plant simply would have disappeared underneath and died.??

Another invasive weed was a very pretty flowering vine that slowly wraps itself tightly around other plants.?It is nearly impossible to remove the vine without hurting or removing the other plant.

The most interesting thing about this weed is the networking system it has underneath the soil. Before it ever surfaces to entangle a plant it is working slowly and steadily underneath to undermine the plant it plans to attack.

As she would remove the weeds in one area, it was amazing to watch the garden thrive far more than it has previously. The healthy plants had room to grow and really show off their beauty.

Of course with weeds come life lessons.

As we talked about the garden and Susanne shared all that she learned, we couldn’t help but correlate these invasive weeds with some of the invasive things we allow into our lives.

Some of these things are readily apparent and others, while seemingly harmless, and maybe even attractive, are just as damaging.

I think about some of the "weeds" I have allowed in my life - relationships, social media, an obsession with network news, poor sleeping habits, isolation, etc. Not all of them were easy to spot, but once I removed them from my life, my growth accelerated.

I’ll leave you to think about the weeds you may have in your life and what boundary you should establish to ensure they do not choke out your growth and joy.

Removing weeds and setting boundaries can be difficult and challenging, but it is something all of us must do.

As Frank Sonnoneberg said, "Pull out the weeds or make peace with the dandelions."

May you begin your day today by removing the weeds.

On the journey with you,

Carlos