I grow seeds of compassion, love, understanding, and hope. I’ve also planted kindness, tenderness, forgiveness, and care. Certain plants like tolerance and respect command a bit more work sometimes. Sometimes my garden gets the occasional weed like anger and frustration. Pests also infiltrate the garden and I try to limit them from ruining all the flowers, vegetables and fruits. These pests are misunderstanding and fear.

It’s sometimes difficult to nourish a garden. Sometimes the weeds and pests try to take over the growth and rob the flowers, fruits and veggies from the nourishment they require. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have what it takes to maintain my garden. Then, I look at my seeds compassion, that have blossomed into something larger than I ever could have imagined. I see my saplings of love and understanding and how they have formed into a loving household, a wonderful marriage, a fantastic group of close friends and phenomenal family.

Then I see the weeds and pests and wonder how to deal with them in order for them not to disrupt the harmony of my garden. Weeds of anger and frustration can sometimes cast a shadow over the garden, blocking it from the sunshine and stunting their growth. When I see weeds like these, a wave of sadness washes over me. Weeds, like other plants, can start out as beautiful creations as well. They can be full of life, and wonderful to look at sometimes. The only problem with these types of plants is that they crave attention and often dominate the garden. I naively let them stay, because they are life too, after all. Then these plants just take over the garden. They grow into those people you don't wish to have around because they sometimes seem bi-polar, or manic depressive, or even just plain unintelligible.

In university, I nourished a weed but the price I paid was horrific. The weed was obsessive, possessive, needy, bi-polar, and despite all the nourishment and attention she received, she ended up sleeping with my boyfriend at the time. I pulled both the weed and my then boyfriend out of the garden and made room for other plants. I sometimes wonder what happened to that weed. I truly cared for her, but I think in some ways, her not being in my garden makes my garden a less complicated one.

There was another fun plant in my garden for a while, and I spent lots of time with it. Truly, I didn't see the thorns...or maybe I chose not to see them. One minute things would be perfect, the next minute this plant would behave in a way that was so scary. It would blow up and get emotional and say the oddest things. As time passed, I began to not like the way this plant made me feel. It brought on more weeds of anger and frustration. I started to take more care of the other plants in my garden, and this particular plant would spring up again. This weed was insecure, hypersensitive, domineering, and agressive. This weed would poke and pry its way through the garden. I used to think it could co-exist with the other plants, but it couldn't. The other plants just shriveled up and bore no fruits nor flowers.

Other gardeners I've spoken to have said that we don't need these kinds of plants in our garden and that I shouldn't always feel like I need to care for all living things. The weeds and pests just block all other living things out. My problem is that I often want to keep the weeds because I see that they too have the potential of beauty and they too are living things, but then I realize that my garden will not flourish with the weeds suffocating all the other plants. Sometimes one has to eliminate certain elements of one’s garden, in order for it to be a healthy one. Now my garden is starting to look good again, and it's not so difficult to maintain.