When weeding, the best way to make sure you are removing a weed and not a valuable plant is to pull on it. If it comes out of the ground easily, it is a valuable plant. ~Author UnknownI finally got the courage to venture into my back yard yesterday after a long cold season of neglect. Weeds abounded, but these are the young green ones that look almost like something you meant to have there. And there sat these two old friends- a little worse for the wear, but keeping up a brave front. I enjoyed my time there so much that I paid it another visit today, and tonight have been looking at seed catalogs.
I taped up a picture this week of the same back yard in 1999, the year of it's heyday. I went out every morning first thing and spent a good 30 to 45 minutes weeding and calling each plant by name and pinching things and moving things. The picture was taken on June 28. One month later, I very suddenly became a mom. I've hardly cast a glance back there since. I've been growing more important and more beautiful things.
As I am grappling with sending Shameka off in the fall, knowing Kendra is just a matter of steps behind her, and having already long been discharged by Chiayim, this may be the year to plant and tend and weed again. I'll plant perrineals this time!
4 comments:
Imagine my delight when I saw this post using this photo! I was about to ask you if I could use the photo on my blog. And the garden quote is wonderful...wish I'd found it to use on Garden Bloggers' Muse Day. And you're right about growing something more important than plants. I've had to remind Phil a couple of times when the kids are playing in our yard that we're raisin kids here, not grass.
I love your yard and the bright chairs that will welcome you whenever you have time to sit in them. You have done a fabulous job tending to the others that have been growing under your loving care. They are blossoming into fabulous human beings as a result of nurturing.
You will return to tending plants, but you leave your fingerprint most importantly in and on those persons who's lives have had the pleasure of your touch. I consider myself one of them.
I love your phrase about growing more important and beautiful things. And indeed, they are beautiful and important. Thank you for tending your children so carefully so that they brighten and enrich the lives of so many of us.
Well said! Having the last of my three children almost out of the house, I completely understand your sentiments.
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