Thoughts on maintaining order

When we got stuck at home during the corona crisis, I decided it would be a good time to remake our rock garden. We created it long time ago and throughout the years its weaknesses became evident and it got somewhat neglected. With my husband helping me doing the most challenging work, the reconstruction was finished in about four months and three weeks ago I planted fresh cuttings from some of the old plants.

The cuttings settled well, faster than I expected, and even started to grow. But with them, new weed appeared, spread quite quickly and needed to be removed to keep the earth clear. So I’ve done the first weeding.

And while weeding the rock garden, I had to think…

… about how weeding applies not only to gardening.

… about how quickly nice ordered things turn into “weed”-infested rubble.

… about how much easier it is to maintain a system from the start when it is less troublesome to perform the necessary maintenance. Tackling the “weedy” requires investing not only much more time and effort but also much more courage and determination to deal with the unpleasant.

… about how order can inconspicuously transform into chaos and how easily we turn a blind eye to it pretending the order is still there somewhere.

Certainly, we don’t have time for everything and sometimes it’s simply not achievable to  maintain the order as timely as needed. But many times it’s just our laziness that lets go of the reins and condemns us to the life of running from one unfulfilled task to another…