Weeds

Weeds are part of every garden, every garden bed, hiding beneath every plant, growing alongside them, or even towering over them. A weed is a plant that doesn’t belong. It doesn’t mean it isn’t beautiful, majestic, or one of your favorite things in the world, but a plant in the wrong place is a weed.

Which one do I pull?!

You have two choices: move the plant, or change what constitutes the rules of the garden.

The hard part is that you don’t always know what a weed is when you start. Some plants look very different when they are 1–3 inches tall than when they are 10–12 inches tall. Their leaves change texture or depth of color. They don’t have a flower yet, or whatever their defining characteristic may be. Some plants are biennial. They set seed one year, grow, and then flower the second year. You pull them at the wrong time of their cycle, and you never see the bloom.

Weeds are difficult to deal with. They are doing damage before we know it, making the whole picture you are trying to paint look a little shabby around the edges.

The wrong people in the garden of your life are like weeds.

They will detract from the effect you are trying to achieve. It doesn’t mean they aren’t beautiful, or majestic, or amazing at every stage of their life cycle, but it sometimes means they don’t belong in your garden.

Pulling weeds is hard. We don’t always have the effort, or the time, or the energy. We don’t always know right away if they are a weed, or if they need to be pulled. But once the decision is made to enhance the vision of your life’s garden, weeds have to go, or they will take the energy your flowers need. They will shade out the growth of your plants.

Sometimes there is nothing else for it but to find the taproot, pull it out, and plant it somewhere else. Not all plants belong in all gardens. It isn’t that you are trying to be mean; the act itself isn’t cruel. Move slowly when you are not sure, but move, to have the best possible garden you can, because you only get one life’s garden.