Out with the old

Today was unusual for two reasons. One, Scott beat me home for dinner. And two, when I drove up, he was out front pulling weeds and clearing the dead growth. (I know I could just end this post right there and it would be so satisfying.) He's a mowing-the-lawn kind of guy but usually I'm the one noticing the weeds. Anyways, when your house belongs to one of those Home Owner's Associations you gotta keep up appearances. 

As he was pulling and cleaning up the dead growth he commented that it was actually satisfying. I couldn't agree more. I actually like the feel of yanking up the weeds, trimming off the dead stuff.  I think every gardener I know is sensitive to the cycle of the seasons. We watch the seeds of spring grow in to the full fruit of summer, fade in the fall, lie dormant in the winter. All the while the cycle of life is threaded underneath. There is work to be done in every season to maintain a healthy garden. I think it is no coincidence that nature's seasons often reflect the natural progression of areas in my life and when I participate in a garden's growth it reminds me of this. 

When I saw through my lens Scott's one hand on the green growth and the other grasping the dead growth I immediately was struck with a thought: How often am I tending to some new area of growth in my life while at the same time dearly clutching to the old? How silly, yet how human of me to do this. How hard is it for me to recognize that I need to gently discard of some thing(s) that may have once served some good purpose in my life but have long past ran their course? Or even more, how hard is it to let go of the things that were truly dead and worthless all along, but to which I have created some deep attachment? 

Yes, seeing it through the lens today made me pause. What he's grasping in his hand is simply dead.  Just decay. If I am willing to participate in the tending to the decay in my own inner garden, oh how much more room and space it will give for new life to sprout, bloom, fruit, and produce life.