Weed-picking

Weeds. That's a familiar concept, even in the desert. Pulling them. That's the strange part. Where we live in Oaxaca, nothing grows for eight months out of the year. Nothing but rocks. If you've ever lived in a desert, you know what I mean. Rocks seem to literally bloom during the dry season. We carefully pluck them out of the garden every summer, but then once the rains stop, and all the plants dry up, rocks pop up everywhere. Our yard back in Mexico is full of nothing but rocks.

When rainy season starts, which we are missing this year, the yard turns gloriously green. There is very little actual grass, but all the weeds grow together to give a colorful impression of grass, and we are thankful.

Yesterday I introduced the children to pulling weeds. Northern Ohio is still cool this time of year, even though the sun is shining, so no sweat or sunburn is involved. Simple weed-pulling. It's a fun pastime. The question is what to do with the weeds after they are pulled? (We just left them in place for the lawn mower to pick up.) Back home the gardener puts them all in a pile and burns them once they are dried.

Is there some spiritual application here? What to do with plucked weeds. Hmmm. I'll have to give this some thought and edit later. Meanwhile it's good to have the excuse to explain to the kids the importance of digging the weeds up from the roots. We have found some pretty overgrown, strong weeds with thick stems from too many times of just mowing over them without digging out the roots.

In the same way, coming to the U.S. reveals some pretty ugly character traits we have let go for too long. A bit of stress, just like a bit of rain, and it all comes up for all to see, just when we'd like to be at our best. Thankfully most people don't look that closely, and all they see is "green" and assume the best of us. Nonetheless I'm in the mood for some serious weed-picking, inside and out, while they are blooming and more obvious to identify.