There was a lady pulling weeds out of her front yard while I was on my walk this evening. It made me smile and my heart warm a bit. When I was little, I can remember visiting my grandma and every time she went to get the mail, on the way back, she would stop to pull a weed or two from the front yard. If we played in the front yard instead of the back, she would walk around pulling weeds and when we left, she would always give us hugs, wave as the van backed out of the driveway, and then lean over to pick any offending weeds she saw. It seemed silly to me – why pick weeds out of your yard? Aren’t they just going to come back? It isn’t like it is your flower bed that you are trying to grow something in particular – it’s just grass. So why bother?
I asked her one time “Grandma, why do you always pick the weeds?” and she replied with something like “Because if I don’t pick them regularly, they will over take my yard.” I thought she was silly, little me didn’t understand. Fast-forward a decade and as I walk through the back yard, I often find myself leaning down to pull a weed or two and as I clean up doggy messes every Friday, I pull weeds as I go along. This may not be my house but I do it because a) the weeds look awful and I want the yard to look good, b) it is a small way I can be helpful around the house, and c) frankly they are just very uncomfortable to walk on and I like walking barefoot in the grass. But every time I lean over to pull a weed, I think of my grandma (she is still alive – I realize that may have sounded like she has died but she is very much alive) and smile. Small things, small moments, small actions – I am beginning to learn that those are what the story life is made of, the big things are just the punctuation.
P.S. Sorry I have been MIA lately. I wish I had a good excuse for you but I don’t. However, I am back and will be posting consistently again. Thanks for bearing with me friends!
One Comment
Christian
I thought you were MIA because something happened, I don’t know if that is a crazy thought or not given the circumstances. Nice to hear that you are back Lyss!
We never really pull out the weeds when we do yard work, I don’t know why exactly. (I ask myself this, but I’m pretty sure I already know the answer, do you ever do that? Not trying to sound like a ‘know it all’!) I think it is because even if we do pull all the weeds out they will still grow back somehow! Probably when neighbors just cut their yards and the cut up weed then can scatter around, or the weed has their roots already deep in the ground. Not putting blame on our neighbors though, here we just mow our yards with big ole lawnmowers and weed eaters, (like everywhere else probably) it gets messy as the cut up grass and weeds scatter around!
That last bit though, I really want to save that, I need to save quotes that I like somewhere, other than my brain where I might forget them! The small things in life are important and I need to remember that.