Weeding: The Literal and Figurative Scoop

Be gentle:  You'll be focusing on the problems but never lose track of the useful thing you are protecting in the process.  "Everything must go" will not work in the garden in the same way it can't work in life. 

Carrots:  Pull back the carrot top with one hand as if you are brushing bangs away from eyes and run a finger along the edge where the brome grass has taken hold.  Dig the fingers in and pull straight up with the roots because the roots will remember who they are.  Toss to the bucket you'll dump in the compost unless the weed has already gone to seed.  If this is the case, dump it far, far away from everyone and everything you care about.  

Some of the weeds will be beautiful:  tiny blue flower, the purple flower of the milkweed plant that calls the monarch home, the purple of African Violet.  I suppose it's up to you.  Do you like them there?  If so, let them be.  A weed is simply any plant in the wrong place.  

I don't have time to do this:  You don't have to weed everything at once.  Like your own life, it's impossible to address everything that's been ailing you in a single sitting.  Take it a little bit at a time, honey.

"Don't go.  I love you.":  Make sure you aren't pulling up something you actually planted.  I've done this before: mindlessly thrashing through only to look down in horror at the eggplant in my hand, the one I'd been nurturing from seed to stem for the last 3 months.

This relates to the previous subject:  Don't step on the good guys.   Yeah.  I've done that, too.


Rain:  When the water leaves the ground crumbly black, do your work then.  The water works the deep things loose and your problems will be easier to address.  (I don't need to say anything about crying right now, right?)