Weeding out the Debris

My husband and I are not the neatest people in the world. We have lived in the same house for over twenty years and it is filled with stuff we have collected over the years, but now do not use. Still, we continue to accumulate stuff. I always joked that I did not know whether first we would implode from all the junk in the attic or explode from all the stuff in our closets. Lately, all this extraneous debris has been dragging me down. I have begun to feel very burdened by my possessions.

Yesterday was another beautiful, false spring day, so I went back out to work in my flower beds. The previous day I had started by cleaning up the weeds that had sprung up in the beds because I had failed to maintain them. After having weeded the beds, I realized that they needed some neatening. The largest bed is separated from the rest of the yard by a row of border grass that my husband had planted years ago. I am not a big fan of border grass, but he loves the stuff because it makes it easier fo him to mow our rather large back yard.

With all the weeds gone and the dead tops of the plants cleared out, I noticed that the border grass had substantially invaded my flower beds. Areas that had held irises and daffodils were intertwined with runners and shoots of border grass. The only way to remedy the situation was to dig everything up and weed out the debris. I spent several hours digging up a large part of the border grass and discarding it. Then I had to dig up the other plants to rid the area of where the border grass had sent its runners and was choking out my irises and daffodils. It was a lot of work, but I was giddy with having rid my flower beds of useless debris.

Coming back into my house, the excess physical debris in my life suddenly appeared magnified. All the extraneous junk we have lying around seemed to be begging me to get rid of it. We all carry excess debris in our lives, both in the form of possessions we no longer need and emotional baggage we should have never allowed to burden us. Cleaning out the border grass from my flower beds will allow my plants to be healthier and produce more flowers for our enjoyment. Perhaps, I need to look at weeding the debris out of my life too.