Lessons from the Garden

This may be an on-going post, I may add to it as more things occur to me. These are thoughts that occurred to me in the garden, that it seems to me can be applied to other areas of life.

* Pulling out the weeds is easier if you pull them when they are small.

I don’t much like the idea of using weed-killing sprays. So I pull them out. This is a bit tedious, but it’s working out pretty well for me. Little by little I’ve been getting a hold on the weed situation.

I have been learning to identify the good and the bad guys so I don’t accidentally pull up something I want to grow. If I don’t know I leave it be. And I don’t touch the poison oak and ivy. It gets sprayed with a solution of bleach diluted with water and a little bit of dish detergent.

This year I started pulling out sooner than in previous years. Actually I don’t remember much about last year, there was a drought and not much of anything was growing. But in previous years I have let various kinds of weeds get bigger before I tried to pull them and it was much harder to deal with them then. Some are really hard to get out when they get big.

* "If you want flowers you need to plant them."

So said my brother. I was trying to mow around the wild flowers. I like wild flowers and I would like to just let them come up. They just don’t seem to come up where you want them however. I did see someone’s yard once where someone had mowed around a patch of daisies. I’m pretty sure this was done by a woman, I don’t know for sure, but it seems pretty likely. I've know a few people who let the yards (backyards) go au natural. Nature tends to be pretty chaotic. Maybe one lesson that could be learned here is that there is something to be said for both cultivated and uncultivated or unplanned things.

* Even trees start out as little plants.

This is a lesson for life, for sure, you don’t always know what little thing that you start doing that may grow into a really big thing later on.