On my walk this morning my eyes were caught by a hedge filled with white, trumpet-like flowers. I thought how lovely and healthy they looked along the roadside path. I remember the first time I noticed this plant – bindweed (morning glory). I thought it looked delightful until my neighbour told me of its habit of over-running if allowed to gain foothold. It wraps around, and chokes other plants, denying and robbing them of sunlight, rising up to 4 metres. The flower lasts a day, but the roots and branches for years. In the wild it adds to the colours of nature, but in the cultivated garden it’s dangerous.
This made me think of those things which we believe sustain and cause the garden of our lives to flourish and be beautiful. We water, feed and encourage them to grow and be strong. However, if we look carefully and critically, we would see that they instead kill off our creativity, sensibility, mental capacity, deplete our ability to grow, rob us of strength and choke our potential. Once it takes hold bindweed is difficult to eradicate and gardeners are advised not to let this plant take root. The question to ask is ‘What have I permitted to pervade and choke the good in the garden that's my life? And how do I get rid of it?’.
Let’s be ready and not afraid to look at our lives, putting effort into and getting help, where necessary, to rid ourselves of the perennials that have chokehold on us.
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