When is it time to garden?

When Betty and I moved into this house, there was a dried tangle of last winter's dried flowers and weeds. They were quite an eye sore. We worked hard and we cleaned them up. We were pleasantly surprised as we saw new growth coming up where the old dried foilage had been. We were even more surprised when we saw that there was a variety of plants. I didn't know which were weeds and which were flowers. We have a neighbor across the street who has a beautiful flower garden and so I decided to ask her to help me identify the different plants. She told me that she was a professional florist and that she would be happy to help me identify what I had in my garden. She declared that I had a variety of valuable flowering plants, and that we had a lot of weeding to do.

Summer came and we enjoyed the flowers. We enjoyed the early daffodils, jonquils and tulips. We enjoyed the fragrance of the lavendar and mint. We enjoyed the iceplant and other ground covers and they formed a beautiful quilt over the soil. We watch Iris and periwinkle bloom. We started to clean up the weeds around the outside edges. The results were pleasing. We enjoyed the flowers and forgot about the weeds.

As blossoms came and went, they left behind a tangle of stems holding spent blossoms. The color is nice, but the garden needs tending.

Behind the lillies I see a carpet of unwelcome weeds. I realize tonight that a half hearted effort isn't going to get the flowerbed presentable. I am going to have to work at it each day until flowers are trimmed, weeds are pulled, and the mess is cleaned up.

If I quit before the job is done, I have wasted my effort. The weeds will grow again and plants that are desirable will grow beyond their borders. Mint is terrible for that.

Our lives are like the flower garden. Our time is colored by the enjoyable things we do. Trips and entertainment make our lives enjoyable. There can be weeds in our life as well. We develop bad habits and unhealty attitudes. These weeds can choke out the beauty of life's garden if we don't take the time to weed and prune.

Early morning meditation is a time that serves this purpose for me. I read from the scriptures. I write in my journal, I read things that help me grow, and I ponder how I will be spending the day. I can tell when I have been neglecting the garden by not taking this time at the beginning of the day. Unhealthy habits and attitudes creep in and I know it is time to tend the garden again.