I have become an avid weeder.

My husband does 99% of the yard work, and all the heavy labor.

I have taken on the responsibility of removing weeds.

Below are photos and descriptions of weeds I tackle, along with some life applications related to these weeds.

These V-shaped, light green weeds spring up within the yard and grow faster than the lawn grass.

As weeds go, these are fairly unoffensive. I could pull them up, but I look at them and say, “Meh.” (My preteen granddaughter taught me saying meh to those weeds indicates  my indifference to their existence.)

I compare these weeds to other things I choose to accept: the clutter that accumulates on my kitchen island, my grandkids’ habit of using the word butt, and the saggy skin on the underside of my arms.

I may not like these things, but I will tolerate them.

Our yard is a hotbed of these weeds. They crop up everywhere: in cracks in the driveway, between the bricks around flower beds, in sunny spots and shady spots, and everywhere else.

The one good thing about them (if weeds can have a good thing) is their ease of removal. Their spindly, pink-white roots lift out of the ground on my first tug. I rarely walk to the mailbox without stooping to feel the thrill of doing away with one.

These weeds represent my ever-present and annoying bad habits:

• Leaving the dishwasher lid down and banging my shin at least once a day
• Pulling on loose cuticles until I make my fingers sore
• Having to unload the dryer before I can put in a load of wet clothes
• Throwing the empty muffin mix box in the trash and then having to get it out three times to check and recheck how long I’m supposed to bake the muffins
• Forgetting to take my 9:00 a.m. dose of medicine until 11:00 a.m., which means I can’t take my 1:00 p.m. dose until 3:00 p.m., my 5:00 p.m. dose until 7:00 p.m., and my 9:00 p.m. dose until 11:00 p.m.

It is an ongoing job to purge both spurge and bad habits from my life.

Ah, the dandelion!

It first shows up with a colorful yellow flower the grandkids pick and bring in as a gift for grandma. Then it develops a feathery puffball the grandkids pick and swing through the air, planting more dandelions.

Finally it spreads its thick green arms across the surface of the ground and dares me to try to pull out its long, white root.

I go after these monsters with a heavy-duty, metal digging stick, and still I don’t always remove the whole root.

These embedded weeds are like ongoing irritations that keep me aggravated but are beyond my ability to eradicate: pop-up ads on my computer; goose poop on sidewalks; political wrangling; dust; loud pick-up trucks; squeaky, wobbly shopping carts; and houseflies that never sit long enough to be swatted.

Dandelions will never be eliminated. Neither will the frustrations of daily life. I should accept that fact and stop letting them make me miserable.

See the discussion of the dandelion above. Different weed, same vexation.

The thistles in my yard are like dandelions or crabgrass, but with thorns. Several times I have reached to uproot a thistle with my bare hands. I always regret it.

Thistles represent my significant troubles, the things that keep me awake at night. They are prickly on the surface and deeply rooted. sicknesses and heartaches among the people I love, COVID-19 and its aftermath, the pitiful condition of the world my grandchildren will inherit, and irredeemable personal regrets.

Setting my mind on these things is as painful as wrapping my fingers around a thistle plant. My only protection from the anguish they bring is prayer.

Did weeds exist in Eden? I think not. Will they exist in the New World we call Eternity? No, neither the literal nor the figurative ones.

For now, both my yard and my life are weedy.

Have you noticed, as I have, that once you encounter an item or a word, that same thing crops up again and again?

Sometimes a Bible verse enters my mind, and the next thing I know the preacher mentions it in the sermon, or I see it displayed on a church marquee.

Why does that happen?

Lately, I have pondered terms common in today’s world that my grandparents never heard: email; bandwidth; bytes; unlimited talk, text, and data, etc.

If Grandma had ever heard me say dot com, she would have feared I had developed a speech impediment.

I wondered about new terms added to my grandparents’ vocabularies when electricity and telephones entered their lives.

For certain, they were quickly introduced to the terms electric bill and telephone bill.

Electricity brought to light (notice the pun) words like socket, light switch, meter reading, shock, outage, and plug and unplug.

Telephones made common such phrases as busy signal, party line, person-to-person, hang up, and please hold.

Such thoughts spiraled through my brain for several days as I vacuumed, pulled weeds, folded laundry, and waited for traffic lights to turn green.

Then, wouldn’t you know it? While reading a novel set in the 1920s, I found the following paragraph.

Life has all at once grown exponentially larger than I could have ever dreamed. Electricity, the automobile and now the telephone have made it clear that possibility is endless for an enterprising mind. I can only imagine what it  must have felt like to navigate a flat earth only to discover its roundness. (Call Your Daughter Home by Deb Spera)

How is it that I happened to read a book that dealt with the exact thoughts I had been having?

My thinking about electricity and telephone terminology could not have inspired me to head to the library and check out a book that featured the introduction of electricity and telephones into American life.

Could it?

I mean, the title, Call Your Daughter Home, does not scream, “Electricity and telephones!”

I borrowed that library book because my sister Pam recommended it to me.

Pam and I are linked, genetically, of course, but also by a preference for the same kinds of books. And our minds do tend to run along the same paths.

For example, I can be thinking about Aunt Betty, and Pam will call me and say, “I talked to Aunt Betty this morning.”

Maybe Pam had been thinking about electricity and telephones, then read Call Your Daughter Home, figured I too had been thinking about electricity and telephones, and gave me a call to recommend that book.

I don’t know.

How do these things work?

Like everyone else, Dan and I bide our time as we wait for the Covid-19 pandemic to end. We look forward to our lives returning to normal, whatever that means.

We have appointments to get our first Covid-19 vaccinations later this month.

On October 27, Dan had an aortic valve replacement.

Then, on February 1, he had spinal surgery, a laminectomy. This procedure is intended to relieve the nerve pressure that caused pain in his back, hips, and legs.

Therefore, Dan has spent much of the winter convalescing.

His back surgery restricted him from heavy lifting, and, until yesterday, I did all the driving.

During our 47-year marriage, Dan has done 99% of the driving when both of us are in the car. I don’t like to drive, and I appreciate Dan’s willingness to take the wheel.

Dan and I have differing approaches to driving. Dan’s goal is to arrive at his destination as quickly as possible. He takes the most direct route, gets angry at traffic lights that slow his progress, and critiques other drivers.

My goal, when I drive, is to arrive at my destination with as little stress as possible. This means I often take non-direct routes to avoid confusing roundabouts and the necessity of making left-hand turns in heavy traffic. I pay little attention to other drivers and don’t mind stopping at red lights. Those pauses give me a chance to put in the next CD in the audiobook I’m enjoying.

When I must act as Dan’s chauffeur, the patience of both of us is tested, but we persevere.

During our long marriage, we have learned to work out differences, work through conflicts, and work with each other, in general.

The operative word in that paragraph is work.

We enjoy watching birds eat from two feeders that hang off our back porch. Cardinals, sparrows, doves, and woodpeckers have entertained us during our forced semi-hibernation.

The birds ate together peacefully until yesterday when a flock of starlings descended upon our backyard. These big birds are aggressive and greedy. All other birds were driven away while these rude pigs of the bird world emptied both feeders before noon.

Today we bought a new feeder designed to discourage starlings. We also bought safflower seed, which starlings supposedly don’t like to eat.

We’ll see.

We haven’t returned to church on the weekends but are happy we can stream services.

I read a daily devotional from Mornings With Jesus. (I regularly get this book as a Christmas gift from my friend, Jan, and give it as a gift too.)

Dan has returned to his old hobby of creating string designs, and I am embroidering.

We read and watch a little television.

I do a bit of writing. (I will have an article published in the Boomers section of The Daily Journal on Saturday, March 6.)

Dan naps and waits for his back to heal.

The highlights of each week are visits from the kids and grandkids.

This is life, as we know it, during the winter of 2020/2021.

Many years ago I had a friend I’ll call Dottie.

Dottie and I shared several similarities.

I loved her sense of humor.

One day, Dottie said to me, “Well, I’m ready to die now.”

“How’s that?” I said.

“I pulled out my kitchen stove and cleaned behind it,” she said. “And I finally dealt with some underwear I had been soaking in a bucket in my garage for weeks. I hated the thought that anyone who came to clean my house after my death would think I was a slob.”

I laughed.

Dottie and I discussed recipes and our kids, and we talked a lot about the number one topic of women: losing weight.

I shared with Dottie that I had held onto a black skirt I had worn in the past but had “outgrown.” I was trying to eat reasonably and exercise so I could again wear that skirt.

Happily, I reached that goal and wore the skirt to work one day. I stopped by Dottie’s desk to share my success with her.

“Congratulations!” Dottie said. “Now that you’ve lost weight, you just need to do something with that hair of yours and you’ll be looking good!”

Dottie had a way of doing that. She would utter what sounded like a compliment and then turn around and slap you with her next comment.

I’m sure my hand flew to my hair when she said what she said.

“I think you should get a perm,” Dottie said.

“No!” I said. “I hate perms! My hair soaks up perm solution like a dry sponge absorbs water. I always wind up looking like Richard Simmons.”

“You need to see my hairdresser,” said Dottie. “She is fantastic. Let me make you an appointment for a perm. You’ll love it.”

The appointment was made, and Dottie and I planned to meet for lunch afterward.

I visited Dottie’s hairdresser.

My hair soaked up that perm solution like a dry sponge absorbs water. I looked like a curvy Richard Simmons.

I met Dottie at the restaurant right after my hair appointment. Her mouth dropped open when she saw me.

“Oh, Debbie!” she said. “That’s awful.”

She laughed her loudest laugh. I tried to laugh but couldn’t.

Encounters with Dottie often ended that way. She would be laughing, and I would be failing to see the humor in the situation.

I haven’t seen Dottie for years, and I don’t want to see her.

Before you judge me too harshly, allow me to say if I did see her, I would be kind. I’d ask about her kids and grandkids. I might even ask if she had pulled her kitchen stove out for a good cleaning lately.

But I would NOT suggest we get together and renew our friendship.

The middle knuckle of the middle finger of my right hand has a knot on it. The knot resulted from a wasp sting I suffered back in the summer while I was working in the yard.

It was a particularly painful sting, and it left me with that knotted knuckle.

I plan to be more careful as I do yard work this summer.

I hate being stung.