The effort it takes to maintain the house is getting ridiculous.
Before when I ignored the garden for the most part (except for my veggie patch), it wasn't too bad. Sure, it takes an hour to water my veggie patch and fifty pots of plants but that was somewhat relaxing. Plus, getting to reap the harvest of passion fruit, herbs, pumpkin, celery and raspberries is pretty delicious:
Vacuuming, dusting, cleaning and other house work duties duly took its time however it wasn't consuming outrageous hours of spare time.
Now that work has settled somewhat for a breather, I finally had a bit of time to really look around these past two weeks. Our weedy lawn has deteriorated so badly after two years of neglect. Mr SMG had seriously given up on the lawn and had plans to rip out the entire thing and replace it with new lawn. Gardening isn't something he enjoys anyway so I'm sure given half the chance, he'd be content to change the lawn every few years.
But I'm not the sort to give up and I was adamant that we would not be defeated by weeds. Like everything in life, allocating regular time and dedication to any task is like an avalanche collecting snow along the way down. The results will happen, it's only a matter of time. To-do lists really work. Sometimes I find an old list from years ago with tasks and goals that I thought I would probably not end up accomplishing due to the challenge, difficulties or time restraint, but I have and every single task was ultimately achieved. Now, I put everything I want to achieve, experience or to accomplish on my list and I just know that I'll get there in time.
Every single day, I have spent about thirty to sixty minutes of weeding.The goal is to get rid of at least one wheelbarrow of weed every single day. It's really amazing that the lawn is starting to finally show the effects of being a time sink. Dandelions, bindis and onion weeds are starting to tremble in fear :p
There's a childhood story about the King and the grain of rice. There was a guy that wanted to marry the King's daughter after doing him a favour (something like that) however the King declined. So the King in gratitude, said he would give the guy anything he desired. The guy said, a grain of rice, doubled every single day. The King scoffed at what he thought was an easy, humble request to meet.
So on day one, one grain, day two, two grains, day three, four grains, day four, eight grains, day five, sixteen grains and so forth.
Ultimately, within a few weeks, the King was unable to meet the request, which wasn't so easy after all, and so gave his permission to the guy to marry his daughter.
I guess I might have messed up the finer details of the story, but the moral of the story was the power of compounding and how it can really snowball with great effect.
The practical application of that concept really is phenomenal in every way and every aspect of our life. Even with regards to weeding!! :p
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