Actually, I have way too many other things going on in my life to worry about the garden. I won’t even be around most of the summer, so I don’t plan on planting anything new. I just wanted the weeds gone and the sprinklers set up.

Besides, last summer the sprinklers went on the fritz without me knowing it and many plants died. Also, the gophers found a lof of other plants extremely tasty and ate them while I wasn’t watching.  That’s what happens when you are too busy to tend to a garden. Gardens need care and attention.

As I was pulling weed after weed and bemoaning the loss of so many beautiful plants, I began thinking about Shavuot. I was asked to teach during the all night learning session at Chadeish Yameinu, my Jewish Renewal community, but I declined. I had been up until 2 a.m. two nights in a row, and they wanted me to teach at 2 a.m. I couldn’t do it. So, I didn’t even attend.

Shavuot marked just one more holiday I have missed, one more Jewish event I have not attended, one more day when I have not been able to focus on my spiritual practice or on my spiritual or religious studies. It marked one more day when I was too busy to pay attention to the garden of my soul.

Like any garden that goes untended, the garden of my soul also has begun to grow weeds and the plants ahve begun to die. I’ve forgotten some of the lessons I once knew, and bad habits, like gophers, have begun to live there and kill off the good habits. This has happened because I’m not paying attention; I’m not focusing on keeping the garden healthy and thriving.

It’s time for me to make time to weed, till, fertilize, plant, water, prune the garden of my soul. It’s time for me to take time — make time — for the spiritual side of my life once again.

For it’s the soul that actually gives us life. Without that, we become like a plant a gopher has eaten. The unseen part – our roots – are gnawed away, and the seen part – our body — withers away and dies.

Yes, it’s time to begin weeding the garden of my soul and then tending to it with love and care. How about you?

And so begins my spring work: pulling weeds. Huge heaps of weeds. I pull weeds each weekend until my hands and arms are so sore that it becomes difficult on Monday to hold a pen or to type on my keyboard. I pull so many weeds that The piles are knee high until I haul them off, wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow to the mulch pile. I dump them over the edge of a hill. It used to be along way down to the bottom of the mulch pile, but after three years of dumping on this “pile,” the pile has made it’s way all the way to the top of the hill. I’ve actually extended our property by about a yard of decomposing weeds.

This year I began early, and the weeds are still short by comparison to most years. They don’t yet even come up to my knees. Other years, I’ve waited until June and they have been shoulder high. The first year I weeded the fenced garden, my husband couldn’t see me among the weeds.

As I spent the third day pulling weeds, I began to think about how many weeds I pull — and even if I pull them before they go to seed — some still seem to reseed and come back the next year. It struck me that some issues in my life take the same course. I work on them and think I’ve got them fixed (pulled), but they sprout up again at some time in the future. And then I have to work on them once again. If we push the issues down and ignore them or try to cover them up, they always rear there heads as well. (Two years ago we put down a fabric weed guard, but this year the weeds had either come up around the edges or simpled begun growing in the mulch on top of it.)

Of course, I could use some weed killer, which would poison the plant all the way to the roots. I don’t have this choice with my personal issues. I can’t treat it with an issue killer. I can’t pull or dig it out. I have to actually find a way to resolve it or come to terms with it in some way that ensures it won’t “grow” back.

My question as I pulled weed after week was simple: Is there a way to ensure that our issues don’t come back once we think we’ve resolved them? Or do we have to resign ourselves to dealing with them over and over again, year after year, just like the weeds that grow on my property?

I think some issues we resolve well enough that, for the most part, they don’t “grow back.” Maybe we work on them hard enough that we managed to get out ever last bit of root or we pull it out enough times before it goes to seed that no seeds are left to sprout. But other issues simple are harder to eradicate. Just when you think they are gone, you find a little shoot trying to find the sun. You have to take a good look at it again, deal with it in some way, and then hope that this time you really did get rid of it.

Sometimes, the process of trying to get rid of the issue makes things worse temporarily, such as when I have to pull out poison oak. If I’m not careful, the plant touches my skin and for several weeks I’m itchy in those places. My skin is irritated. Problems and issues that arise time and time again can cause the same kind of reaction, seeming bigger than the last time, more aggravating than before, until we learn a better way to resolve it or move through it.

So, I suppose our personal issues and problems are just the weeds of our life, and we must resign ourselves to having to occasionally — or continually — deal with them in one way or another. Over time, the number of weeds we have to pull gets smaller and smaller, but the garden of our lives, like any garden, will probably always have at least a few weeds that sprout up and require our attention.