Coming to terms with Noxious Weeds

I had an interesting interaction with my neighbour who is a keen gardener. She often will come over to our side of the fence and point out all the noxious weeds and plants we should be removing.

I, on the other hand, am not a keen gardener. I like a nicely kept garden though and every time I look at our overgrown garden, I get a little anxious at the thought of where to start with this runaway project. I keep telling myself I'll just need to throw money at the problem.

As the neighbour gave me one of her lectures on local flora, going through and identifying each plant by its proper name, I began to realise that she saw this intimidating green mess with much more clarity than I did.

I'm often less intimidated by the prospect of intellectual tasks. Over the years I've learnt that the best place to start is to come to terms with the subject matter at hand--to learn the meanings of things and build up a solid foundation of the key ideas and terminology from the ground up.

I've often thought of things like gardening as manual labour, and so I've never really thought of them as an intellectual pursuit. I have to wonder whether I'm making it 'labour' by not really coming to proper terms with the subject. It's clear that my nosey neighbour gets some real joy from this pastime, whereas I tend to view it only as a chore.

Whatever the pursuit, It might be the case that when we sit only on the surface level we struggle against ambiguity, making it always appear intimidating and more difficult. When we delve a little deeper and become better acquainted with our subject matter, on speaking terms, we might find that it gets a little easier.

Now that I know the Chinese privet and woody nightshade need to be removed, I guess I have my starting point. That alone makes the task a little easier.