Fall is my favourite season. It’s a time of energy and renewal… a time to make plans and to be productive. It’s also the time of harvesting. This year, my garden taught me a life lesson that I feel I must share with you.
Last year I made my first attempt at gardening. I planted some strawberries, tomatoes, peas, carrots and herbs. I yielded a great garden, with the exception of the carrots. I planted my carrots too late, so they didn’t have enough time to grow.
This year I decided to try planting carrots again. I sowed the seeds a little bit earlier and waited for them to sprout. I watered and weeded and waited. Soon those bushy tops came up and the dream of crunching a garden fresh carrot became so tangible, I could almost taste it! I waited some more and wondered, when do I enlist the help of my daughter and pull these carrots up? In anticipation of this great gardening event, I regularly read her the children’s storybook, The Carrot Seed.
Then the day came. We put on our gardening gloves and started to pull up the carrots. It was the biggest disappointment ever! They were scrawny little things. They were teeny, tiny, little carrots.
After doing some research on the Internet, I realized my error. I didn’t thin the carrots enough. Without sufficient space underground, they had little room to grow. They fought over what little space they did have and as a result, there weren’t any large carrots… just a whole bunch of tiny ones.
I reflected on this and thought that the gardening of carrots can be compared to my life. I’m busy. Relationships, activities, projects, hobbies, and commitments compete for what little time I have. I realized that if I don’t thin out my life’s “garden” I will yield insufficient crops.
By thinning out my garden, I can invest my time and attention on fewer things but will have better results. I will work to build relationships, to minimize or finish projects, scale down my commitments and hopefully I will harvest a garden I can be proud of. A garden with a few big, beautiful, carrots is better than a garden loaded with tiny ones.
Have you thinned out your garden of carrots lately?
How does overcommitting yourself compare to carrots? Come find out. #life #wisdom Click To Tweet
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Not figuratively or literally, but it’s a great reminder. Thank you :)
totally agree with this, nice post. re-prioritizing is something i go back to all the time. thanks for the reminder! have a great week.
Thanks ladies. I think we sometimes need a reminder to evaluate what we choose to focus our time and efforts on. I wish you well in the “thinning of your carrots”.
Jennifer, I love this post! I was really blessed by reading this tonight… I am working on this right now but I’m kinda at a loss. I don’t know how to “thin my carrots” because a lot of our busyness is due to mandatory stuff for my kids. :( I went from having “space” and simplicity to feeling like I don’t even have a moment to sit and think. Ugh!
Its almost 2am here and I just can’t sleep. So I figured I should just catch up on my favorite blogs rather than sit & stew & stress. Know what I mean?
Hey, are you on fb? or Google+?
Sofia,
I’m glad this post spoke to you. Sometimes thinning out your garden depends on the “season” you’re in. Maybe this isn’t the time to thin your carrots but if you’re aware of how important it is, you may be able to prioritize when other things come up or when your kid’s schedules slow down.
The Deliberate Mom is not on Facebook or Google+ but it is on Twitter.
I’m glad I’m one of your favourite blogs and honoured that you take the time to read.
Wishing you some peace and rest.
This is really am a reminder indeed! Thank you so much for this post!
Those carrots are adorable LOL
Thank you for always offering great reminders and tips :-) One of these days I will actually thin my carrots!
Amazing post Jennifer! I have a similar garden analogy I use that I want to share. A wise college professor shared with me when I was having some personal issues. She said, “Think of your life as a beautiful garden, you want everything in that garden to thrive and be hearty. It isn’t a bad thing to get rid of the weeds (in this case toxic friends) to make space for more beautiful flowers to grow.” When she put it that way, I found I valued myself more and didn’t feel guilty for cutting ties with the negative people in my life. You know what happened? I became happier, less stressed and my quality of life improved as I surrounded myself with beautiful humans.
That is a beautiful analogy and what a wise college professor you had! Thanks for sharing this Jeannine!
That’s how most of my carrots turned out this year! I did the same thing by not thinning them. What a great comparison to life Jennifer. I could definitely use some thinning in my life.
As I look back on this post I think I need to revisit the thinning of my carrots as well. Thanks my friend.
xoxo