It’s beginning to feel a tiny bit like spring here, which means that it’s time to start thinking about spring yard work.
Now, if you know me personally, you may or may not know that my husband and I have rules around all green things, so the warmer months can be a bit tricky for us.
It’s so serious that we joke that him watering the plants was in our marriage vows.
Because it was.
Some Rules Were Meant to Be Broken
And all of these rules work out quite nicely for me, you see, because I’m not allowed to touch lawn equipment.
I have, in fact, only broken this rule twice in our 22 years of marriage.
- Once when he had a broken collarbone and the lawn needed mowing. I must not have done it right though, because he was out there the next week, sling and all, pushing away. Guess those years of mowing while growing up weren’t enough to properly “learn me”.
- The second time was after we had graduated to a riding lawn mower that goes faster than most race cars. The lure of an uninterrupted hour was enough to convince me that this was an excellent idea, despite my spotty history with recreational vehicles. I lasted a full 5 seconds with the glory of windblown hair before executing the perfect dismount, never to ride again.
Seriously though, this combination of my learned helplessness and his repressed, Master Gardner complex has served me extremely well…
Except When He Starts…
Trimming (a.k.a. pruning).
When he gets going, there’s no stopping him.
I spent 3 years with pretty-much-dead arborvitae bushes all along my front walkway because they had been over-pruned.
The bushes were now half dead and the first one was 90% dead.
Only patches of green remained.
“Welcome to my home! Come walk past all my dead landscaping. Isn’t this welcoming and inviting???”
And when I would consult with the Master Gardener about the situation, his response would always be, “They’ll come back.”
Umm… They’re not coming back…
We both knew there was no way on God’s green earth that those bushes were coming back.
So, I had to try to fix this.
I regularly considered applying green spray paint to the dead wood. Would Forest Green or Hunter Green look better? Umm… this may be one of the reasons I’m not allowed to touch green things, BTW.
Finally, I paid one of my teenage sons to pull them out on the sly with a vehicle and chains one day while my husband was gone.
Problem solved!
My son was thrilled; my husband, not so much.
Afterall, they were going to “come back.”
Luckily, he got over it.
Pine Tree Problems
After that, life was going along smoothly for awhile, until one day I noticed that some of my 20 ft. pine trees – trees that looked perfectly fine to me, all-of-the-sudden had acquired 2-foot wide sections of missing limbs.
Right about at the 6-foot mark.
Hmmm…
Again, I consulted with the Master Gardener.
“Have our trees contracted some mysterious tree disease causing entire limbs to fall off?”
His comment, “It was either that or the whole tree.”
Not quite so sure about that.
And now I’m thinking, “How do I fix this?”
I’m pretty sure that a teenager and a truck won’t work this time.
And you can’t spray paint air.
I’m totally stuck.
This cannot be fixed.
I am a victim, once again, of over-pruning.
Over-pruning
I married an over-pruner.
And he would say he married an under-pruner.
And he wouldn’t be wrong.
I am definitely an under-pruner.
So, what does this have to do with anything?
Especially with life coaching?
I’m pulling on this thread today:
Our actions are only reflections of our insides.
You see, I like to collect things, keep them around and maintain the status quo.
He likes to cut things out.
And some would say that that allows those things to grow into better things.
And they would be right.
Sometimes we have to cut things out in order to have a better life.
To make room for the new growth.
Which brings me back to my life.
Lately I’ve been doing a little extra thinking about what I want to cut from my life in order to make it even better.
Because I believe that that’s one of the secrets to a better life.
Get rid of the dead stuff, even if it leaves a little scar.
Why?
So that I can have more of the good stuff.
So I can do more.
So I can be more.
Get rid of the sugar.
Get rid of Candy Crush.
Get rid of thoughts that distract me from an amazing future.
Some of these decisions are not simple, nor are they easy.
But they are worth it.
After all, a gardener only prunes the plants SHE wants to flourish.
What do you want to flourish in your life?
I know many of you email me back when I ask you questions like this.
I LOVE your emails and messages, but this week I want to challenge you to take it up a notch:
Get on the phone with me and tell me what you want to flourish in your life.
This is what I help people with every single day.
And I would love to help you.
It’s time to do some spring mind work!
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