Tuesday, March 24, 2015

How Spring Pruning and Cleaning Applies to Everyday Life

It is finally officially spring according to the calendar, and signs of it are shooting up all over. At the beginning of March I attended a pruning class with my local extension office. I learned that early spring before trees, shrubs or vines start blossoming is the ideal time to prune back deadwood, and open the plants up to optimum sunlight.

I'm often amazed at how applications for gardening or even just maintaining a yard can also reflect practices for everyday life. For instance, as a writer when I'm revising my work I'm pruning out redundancies, unnecesary backstory, and sometimes whole characters that don't help drive the plot forward. I'm doing this to open up the plot in order to prepare it for being seen by others in the same way you prune to open up the branches to your fruit tree or shrub to the sun for optimum fruit production. Both things bear fruit just in different ways. Everyday life can also be more productive if we resolve to prune out some bad habits we've developed and open ourselves up to a healthier, sunnier, future.

Spring cleaning often serves the same purpose. You open up your house to warmer and milder breezes and clean windows, curtains and floors. You're airing out your home and cleaning out the detritus that always accumulates during the winter. Both cleaning and pruning whether it's your house or garden, are all renewal processes. And spring, before the weather gets too warm to want to have windows and doors open, is the ideal time to carry out these tasks.

Even though we often set goals in January at the first of the year, winter to me has always been the planning and preparation stage of the year. Spring is when we finally welcome longer warmer days and are finally ready to carry out the goals and actions we set or planned for in winter. So, if you feel like you've veered off course from where you wanted to be, or what direction you planned to head in at the beginning of the year, fear not. It is still early. Maybe, you just needed a change in season to spring into action.

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