Home   >   Spirit   >   Are There Weeds In Your Flower Bed?

Are There Weeds In Your Flower Bed?

By on March 17, 2014
YellowRosesc copy

By Sarah Van Ness

Believe it or not, spring will be here soon. Ah, spring, that wonderful season of singing birds, green grass, and rebirth. But, my favorite part about spring is the flowers. Boy, do I love flowers! They’re a reminder of nature’s beauty and the miracle of life and the delicacy of creation and all that other outdoorsy stuff. They’re vibrant and soft all at the same time. Nature’s accessories, you might say. I just love them!

So every spring, I promptly report to the nearest nursery to purchase my fair (okay, probably unfair) share of nature’s bounty. Daisies and begonias and snapdragons and sunflowers; if it grows, I want it. My habit has been this: I buy everything I can fit into my car and bring it home, always so excited to plant that year’s flower beds I can hardly stand it. Outside I go with trowel in hand and visions of HGTV garden shows dancing in my head. I dig and I plant and I mulch and I marvel. Ah…what a grand creation! I gleam with delight at the beauty I have wrought. I am a gardening goddess and all is well with the world…at least for a little while.

The next morning, I stroll to my patio and delight at my flowers with a cup of tea while the sweet strains of local lawnmowers play on in the distance. Day by day, I delight in the gorgeous garden of my own design. I’m pretty pleased with myself for about a week and then the funniest thing happens. Inevitably, I see an annoying green shoot sticking its ugly little head up between my Gerber daisies and decorative grass. What’s that? Oh no! It can’t be…it’s a weed!! A weed has the nerve to disrupt my utopian garden of earthly delights??? I think not! I indignantly yank the little sucker out by the roots, brush off the dirt, and go on about my business. But, by the next day, ten more friends have taken his place. And the war begins. It’s me against the thistles! And every year, the thistles win.

As we approach spring this year, and I turn the great Thistle war of 2013 over and over in my head, a thought came up. You might be surprised to learn this is a thought I have never considered before (I know, I know…it seems pretty obvious now), but what if I did a little more preparation of the soil before I stuck those beautiful plants in the ground? Could I avoid the war altogether? Maybe if I spent some time tilling and clearing and working the land (how agrarian of me), I would get a flower bed I could be proud of all season long. Yep, sure enough, my beloved HGTV.com clearly states that preparation is key to gardening success (I’m pretty sure the website also said “Duh, Sarah, this isn’t rocket science!”, but I may have misread). Sure, the hard work of the preparation doesn’t yield pretty results right away, but in the long run it adds to the beauty tenfold.

Well, as I am wont to do, this got me thinking about us humans, too. How many times do we have weeds in OUR flowerbeds? We want the rewards, the good stuff, the pretties, but we haven’t done the work of preparing our soil. Instead, we chase the annoying weeds that show up in our day to day life. We try to stomp them, hide from them, lie about them, or pretend they aren’t there when, if we would have taken the time to honor the process and prepare our human flowerbed, we would be thistle free. Like so many lottery winners who wish they’d never won, when we’re unprepared we’re incapable of holding on to any fleeting success we might have. We get something good but it’s gone just as quickly as it came. It’s impermanent, and we wonder why. We want the flowers so badly that we end up watching them wither on the vine, choked out by the weeds of life, wholly unable to do a thing about it except regret and promise next time it will be different.

You know what? I don’t much like that option so how about we try doing it right this time around? Instead of lusting over the immediate beauty, let’s try practicing a little patience and really preparing our flowerbeds. Let’s read, let’s journal, let’s ask for help, let’s meditate, let’s explore our feelings, let’s get comfortable in our own skins. Let’s do the work before we expect the reward. Let’s show up for ourselves first and let everything else come after. I found a great quote by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. He said:

“He who is best prepared can best serve his moment of inspiration.”

Isn’t that what we’re all after; to be the stewards of our inspiration, the caretakers of our dreams? I want to create something beautiful in this world, and I’m guessing you do to.

I want to make an impact. I want to help others be their best selves. But, so many times I put the proverbial cart before the horse and end up back where I started, dealing with dandelions instead of marveling at roses.

It’s so easy to get caught in inspiration without preparation, and one won’t get anywhere without the other. I propose we do it differently from here on out. Let’s prepare our flowerbeds and ourselves with the care and attention that they both deserve; with all the tilling, turning, crying, laughing, listening, shoveling, studying, and grooming needed. That way, instead of pulling weeds, we can spend our time pursuing dreams and creating a life we love. It might take a little longer, it may be more of a commitment, but I promise, the reward will be well worth the effort. I mean, just imagine a garden without a single thistle, an idea that grows to fruition, or a goal that is reached and relished, all because you took the time to prepare, plan, and process.  Now, THAT is a beautiful thing!

 

 

Sarah Van NessSarah Van Ness, CACR™, CCR®, is an Certified Soul Coaching® Master Oracle Card Reader, Certified Angel Card Reader™, and Empowerment Coach. Her passion is helping women Excavate, Create, Cultivate, and Celebrate their very best lives. She uses Oracle Readings to teach her clients tap into their intuition, reach for their dreams, reclaim their power, and get their happy on! She is hard at work on her first book all about self acceptance, personal power, and feminine energy. Sarah resides in Liberty, MO with her husband, Chris, and their three children. To learn more about Sarah and her work, visit www.sarahvanness.com.

About simply...woman!

We encourage spreading the message of knowledge and wisdom. We appreciate and thank our featured partners for their articles. All information provided on Simply…Woman online magazine is for reference only; the content is based on the authors’ experiences and therefore is not intended as a substitute to the services of a fully qualified professional. Although every reasonable effort is made to present current and accurate information, Simply…Woman makes no claims, promises or guarantees about the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of the information.