Weeds aren’t manageable if you’re only available to manage them intermittently.
For essential reasons, I’ve spent most of the summer unable to work in my new vegetable garden. (I built a 4×12 raised bed last spring, and added its twin this spring.) They’re fully planted with organic veggies – herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini, summer squash, and watermelon.
The plants are thriving and productive when I can get to them and harvest…but the weeds are thriving and productive, too. They’ve crowded out space that should belong to the things I planted, claiming water, sunlight, and nutrients from the soil.
Most of the skills we build in life need to tended like a vegetable garden. These skills – concrete skills like piano, singing, mathematics, or a second language, and also ephemeral skills like listening, curiosity, and work ethic – can get crowded out of our minds if we don’t tend to them regularly, to keep the weeds at bay.
We are entering that season when we help clear out all the weeds in our students’ minds. Take a good long look at your own mental gardens to see what is well tended and what needs a good weeding.