Thursday, May 17, 2012

A soil enriched

I'm not sure if life truly speaks to me, or if I'm just read waaaaaayyyyy to much into things but there seems to be lessons of life all around me.  Spring and summer time always seem to remind me of the law of the harvest.  You reap what you sow, you cant plant anything and expect that it wont require maintance and the lesson of the week, my flower bed. A soil enriched.

When we purchased this house, it was fairly easy up keep.  The previous owners didn't really like yard work so there wasn't much too it.  Sprinkler system on a timer, rectangular lot, all grass with the exception of basic flower beds in front of the house and on the corner which houses a tree.  The flower beds existing had basic shrubs, weed barrier and bark.  I'm more of a flower gal. I had no knowledge of weed barrier and felt that the bark wasn't doing it for me. So, I threw out the bark, pulled up the paper and found the soil to be a little less than desirable.  Over the next few years I began to invest in my soil.  I added multch, potting soil and came to appreciate weed barrier.  Believe it or not, I enjoyed working those basic flower beds and over time, the soil actually got better.  Until... da da da... I did something rather foolish.

 Last summer we decided to tare out the side stripe of grass and put in cement.  It was QUITE the process.  An experience any pregnant woman would remember! I think my kiddos brought more rocks inside than they left out! And ps pockets full of rocks do not totally ruin the washing machine! Anyway, I thought because we were removing a bunch of the soil underneath the section of sod that had been removed, I could take that soil and raise up my healthy flower bed.  How pretty it will be I thought to myself.  I dumped probably two tractor scoops FULL of dirt onto my flower bed.  It took me ONE watering to realize that I had made a huge mistake.  The soil that I had added was INCREDIBLY rocky and 98-99% clay.  I mean... this is the stuff that landslids are caused by!  Like most people do when you realize you made a mistake, I ignored it.  Hoping that it wouldn't matter. And really it didn't, until I wanted to plant flowers.   Poor things, died in about a day!

As I spent the next few days removing the bad soil and add in multch once more, I thought how similar my life had been like this soil.  It doesn't matter how much youve enriched your life, to repent of sins, to forgive others if you decide to stop and do the opposite.  Sins, a lack of forgivness can not just be ingored.  They corrupt and tant you and eventually surface when you try to progress in the beauty of life.  Work is required to retrace your steps and investments have to be made to put richness in once more and hopefully a lesson learned.  Keep crummy soil from entering where you want flowers to grow!