For anyone who knows me, I take great pride in meticulously maintaining my yard, especially during the summer. My partner would say I’m far too anal retentive about it all and he’s probably right, as that came to light quite a bit for me over the past few months due to an overly hot and dry summer and a construction project on the outside of our house that affected both greatly.
It all began in June when the lawn company came to put some fertilization down. Regrettably, I made the mistake of also having them do a weed treatment for the entire yard, even though I had very few weeds at the time. In my mind I thought, “Well at least this will help prevent weeds from coming up!” Unfortunately, that decision wasn’t too wise, as what it did do was burn my yard and turn much of it brown.
As the summer went on, I did my best to accept what happened from that decision and be happy with what beauty remained. But when an invasive type of grass I didn’t want began to invade a large portion of my backyard in early August, I decided to have the lawn company return and use a specific product to remove it. Yet again I made a quick decision without putting much thought to it. Well given the intensity of heat and shock the yard had already taken two months earlier, I ended up with an even more brown and sad-looking yard with almost no green left.
Shortly thereafter, my partner and I discovered the corner of our house had eroded over time due to water damage. The foundation needed immediate repair and when the company we hired came in, a large portion of my already brown yard was dug up to correct the issue. So I decided during this job to have the company heavily thatch, aerate, and reseed the yard when they were done. In other words, I decided to start over from almost scratch.
While my mind was screaming “Aaaahhh!” during all of it, the landscaper doing much of the work told me that what I was doing was going to pay off in the long run and that next spring, my entire yard was going to be and look far healthier than ever before. It was really hard to believe that though as I stared out over my yard now littered with plenty of patches of nothing but dirt, tiny holes and small-sized pieces of mud that looked like miniature turds.
But as I pondered all this, I compared it to the fact that I too totally started my life over about six years ago, ever since I lost a business and much of my finances at the beginning of 2010. Since then, I’ve often felt like I’ve been burned, dug up, thatched, aerated, and reseeded over and over again and none of it has ever truly felt or looked pleasant to me on any level. Yet, somehow I have continued to believe the me that’s emerging from all this is becoming much brighter, fuller, and better than I ever have been in this entire life.
So maybe that’s the main reason why I went through what I did with my yard this year. So that I could see that even a sad-looking yard could be completely transformed by something greater than itself, simply by being fully overhauled and letting a little time pass by. And just the same, maybe God has been overhauling me as well these past six years even when it’s felt like I couldn’t get any more worked over than I have. We shall see, but I remain hopeful in the outcome that will ultimately prevail with both my yard and with me…
Peace, love, light, and joy,
Andrew Arthur Dawson