During the last school break, we designated one day as a
family ‘work’ day in the garden. We had an area that needed to be totally
stripped of the plantations that had been left to grow wildly-out-of-control there
and, due to the fact that we were going to try to replant some of them
elsewhere in the garden, we needed to uproot these plants relatively carefully.
It was ‘all hands on deck’ as we dug, pulled, sorted and
bagged up the branches and stems that we weren’t keeping and set aside the ones
we were.
Slowly the area that was once overgrown looked stark and
bare in contrast to just a few hours earlier.
An empty space remained.
Everything that had once crowded and choked the soil was now
gone.
There was another area of the yard that previously had
nothing growing there. It’s an odd space since not much rain or sun hits the
area. We had decided to move some of our
smaller plants that we’d had hanging indoors to this spot and give it a bit
more life.
With careful hands we dug evenly spaced holes and prepared
the ground for the new life it was about to receive.
The words that kept coming to mind throughout the day were, ‘out-with-the-old
and in-with-the new’.
Painfully, afterwards (my muscles were so sore) as I reflected on that day of gardening, I realised that it
was not just physically exhaustion due to the effort required to remove the
plants in such hot weather, but it was the mess,
the time and the chaos of it all that struck me.
And strangely it echoed how life feels right now.
To make room for new habits, new routines and new thinking,
the old must be removed.
Sometimes the painfulness of the pulling, the clearing and
the sorting out is like a complete make-over; a stripping back of what has
always been there, growing wildly-out-of-control. The result after the uprooting, and the
clearing-out is a stark, blank canvas… an open space… an empty basket. It’s a new chance.
Although it’s hard and exhausting work, this ‘stripping
away’ creates a chance to start again, to begin afresh.
It creates new opportunities to replant {more} deliberately
this time.
To consider what is best for this space, to make a decision
with the benefit of hindsight and determine what
should go in and what should not.
In this process there is a critical step in the middle that
needs to be done.
It is not even a step it is a ‘pause.’ It is a pause before the replanting begins that
allows time for the preparation of the soil … for it is the condition of the
soil that will ultimately affect the growth.
So quickly our lives can get completely overcrowded and out
of control.
How difficult it can be, in the busyness of life, to stop long enough to make a change for
it’s in the stopping long enough that
the starting to live more
purposefully can begin.
