Weeding....

I've not done weeding for quite a long time but today, I did, after visiting a friend's mom. In the last 2 weeks, I've started going back into my garden again, cleaning up the pots, clearing the dead leaves, etc.... And I found out that I enjoy the solitude that came with it. I could think. Life has been a blur of rush. My son tells me that I am constantly up to something and he gets flustered cos I'd be reminding him to do this or that....

So, this afternoon, after I changed the string of my trimmer, I decided to do some weeding. There was a slight drizzle but it wasn't heavy enough to wet me. The rains in the last few days have made the ground soft and pulling those weeds out didn't need much effort.

And my mind began to think.... Weeding and life... When Other Half and I renovated the side of our house, one of the things we did was to take our contractor's advice and put in a layer of sand for our compound. He ordered red sand for us so that our grass would grow better. He over ordered and we ended up with about one foot of red sand laid in our compund! Weeds would have a hard time rooting themselves the soil beyond the one foot deep sand. 8) We planted carpet grass and in those early years, we'd diligently pull out the weeds. But fighting against the weeds is a hard battle. They keep coming back with a vengeance. One way of slowing their advance is to make sure that our grass grow well. The red sand was good for their growth... and though we had some problems every now and then, the weeds were well under control.

That was until some years back, when we noticed that the snakes would come at certain time of the year. So, we started to put sulphur as deterrent.... I've had many encounters with these creatures and they still make me squirm. Little did I realize that sulphur is acidic and over the years (my own negligence cos I didn't check on my sis-in-law who was happily spreading the sulphur) the grass by the fence began to thin out and in some areas, they actually died. And the weeds began to have a gala time growing in those areas.... turns out weeds are really hardy and not totally put off by the acidic nature of the soil. So, they grew....

Weeds... you can never get rid of them cos if your neighbour's compound is full of weeds, it's just a fence away from invasion.

Life.... we too have weeds in our lives. Weeds are like bad peer pressure or negative company. Weeds grow too. They are also green. If you use a trimmer and trim it real short, from far, the compound looks kinda nice too. But they're not nice to step on cos some have thorns which will hurt your legs. Some throw your planning of your compound into disarray with their odd shapes and sizes and different growth spurts.

Like weeds which grow easily, bad practices are easy to pick up, easy to let it grow and overwhelm our lives. Weeds if given half a chance will overwhelm an area in no time...

Our fight with the weeds is made easier because of the groundwork we put in earlier (the thick and fertile sand) but even though groundwork was made, without the proper maintenance and vigilance, the weeds still had a field day. The damage control and repair is very hard on the knees and back..... 8( And weeding is a job where you must get your hands dirty. The dirt finds its way to your nails and can stubbornly lodge themselves there. Was thinking about the challenges of raising kids as I thought about this. We may lay good foundation but if we don't monitor, our kids might still stray.... etc, etc.

There were many more thoughts which went through as I weeded. I ended up with a small bag of weeds. The drizzle got heavier and I went in to make a cup of tea to go with my book (Eat, Pray, Love); it was nice sitting on the swing, reading, accompanied by the sound of running water from my fish pond, and chimes from my need-to-change wind chime, caressed by the cool north wind which blows at this time of the year.... It's a nice change, going back to the greens... especially at this time of the year, when sitting outside is possible.