It's Baaaaaaaack!

Lessons from the Garden

The life force of this small green plant has the destructive capacity to split concrete.  The tenacity of nature's energy has always fascinated me, but I'm not fascinated by this particular plant's will to live.  It's the remnant of the massive 35-year-old tree that we removed from our front yard two summers ago because its roots were cracking our driveway and threatening the concrete pad in our garage.

 
We had two men working by hand and with machines cutting down the tree and then attacking the stump and roots.  They thought they had it conquered but the roots had another plan.

Ah the roots.  The command central of the tree.  Hidden in the depths was a remnant that demanded to live.  It took time, but its shoot finally broke through and has surfaced very much alive, much to my chagrin.  That means we either dig up that portion of the yard looking for the interloper or we bring out the chemicals.  I am loathe to take either position but something must be done and since disrupting my nice new yard isn't an option to me, I've sprayed RoundUp mercilessly on this thriving green shoot.  It was bad enough that I had to kill the mother (tree), now I have to kill the child.

Remnant - (n) something left over; a surviving trace.

How often have I tried to eradicate something in my life only to leave a remnant that later reared its ugly head?  Was I too lazy to fully seek and destroy this thing the first go-round, or was I harboring a desire not to completely let go?

With the tree, we didn't search far enough away from the tree to discover these hidden roots.  We didn't think they had grown that far.  We simply didn't take the time and effort to find out.  The moral of the story for me is if I make the decision to remove something destructive from my life, then it's worth the energy to eradicate it completely.

Didn't I read something about that in the Old Testament?  The Israelites did not fully carry out one of God's commands.  They second guessed Him instead and it came back  in spades to almost destroy them.  I hope I learn faster and with less grief than they did.