Raise your hand if you enjoy yardwork.
I don’t particularly enjoy yardwork. I don’t mind it, but it’s definitely not the first thing that comes to mind when I have some time to do chores around the house. With that said, while I don’t enjoy it, I really enjoy the look of a neatly landscaped yard. It keeps my OCD at bay. Overgrown limbs and faded mulch don’t bode well for a joyful frame of mind.
Now that I’m not constantly running around trying to manage multiple fires all day long with my old job, I realized I needed to tame my backyard hardscape. See Blog Post #1, where I shared that my house was neglected for years. Sadly, I really wasn’t joking. That most definitely included the landscaping. We have a rectangular area of rock between our tiny patio and our large backyard. I’m inclined to call it a rock ‘garden’ but the only ‘gardeny’ aspect about it in my opinion is the weeds. For the sake of this post, I will refer to it as my ‘rock garden’. No joke, one weed was at least 2 feet high. So yea, it was pretty bad.
Another pet peeve of mine since we moved in was that there was no flow from the patio to the lawn without going around the rock garden. There were two sets of four large flat rocks in the middle of the rock garden, both arranged in a sort of square. It looked nice but had no function. That, coupled with the previously mentioned undersized patio, was not conducive to actually using the nice lawn, which, ironically, was one of the main reasons we liked this property in the first place.
As I sat, kneeled, stooped, stood, pulled, lifted, etc. in the July heat for literally hours, I couldn’t help but wonder how I had allowed it to get that bad. Oh sure, I came up with at least a half-dozen ‘reasons’ why I hadn’t weeded, like “we’re busy”, “we’re never home”, “I don’t have the right tools”, “we don’t go out there much”, “I forget” and so on. When I stopped to think about it though, it all led to one thing. I didn’t have a maintenance routine for it. All those reasons I mentioned above are true, but they only exacerbate the issue. I simply didn’t have any routines in place to ensure it was getting done. I started thinking more about that. How can I do a better job ensuring that I keep up with this task? What other areas of my life have weeds growing unchecked? It always amazes me how hearty weeds are. They don’t need any care or attention. The longer they go unchecked, the harder they are to remove. Often, we don’t even realize the weeds are even there until they’ve taken over and like me, we ask ourselves, “how did this happen”. As hard as we prune, and feed, and tend to our favorite stuff, weeds come along and edge out those favorite things.
With sweat dripping off me and my trusty canine companion panting along with me, I went to work, knowing this project would take up the majority of my day. My goals were this: 1) pull every stinking weed, and 2) rearrange the rocks to make paths from the patio directly to the lawn. I’m happy to report that I persevered and achieved my goals. I even rearranged the patio décor and got Nick to string trim the grass around the rock garden for the first time in a while. It looks SOOO much better!
I cannot let this happen again. The really good news is this: weeds are easy to get rid of once we’ve opened our eyes to the fact that they’re there, and we make a choice to do something about them. They don’t put down very deep roots. Maintenance routines can keep us on track. They keep life under control. They keep our eyes open to where the weeds are growing and allow us to nip them in the bud, so to speak. They save our future selves from larger problems. My super-easy fix for the rock garden going forward is a weekly appointment with an alert on my digital calendar. If I spend 5 minutes each week pulling weeds, I can keep up during the growing season and prevent myself the pain of what I went through this week. During my ‘rock garden reflection’ I also identified several other areas where I can spend a small amount of time maintaining the true blossoms and preventing the weeds from taking over.
Where are the weeds in your life?
Weeds in the yard More weeds Functional and tidy
