The Parable of the Weeds

 There are many admirable traits of my parents but one of the best traits that my parents possess is that they take every opportunity to teach me and my siblings. One of the most memorable lessons happened in the dreaded garden, every summer, for ten years. "The Parable of the Weeds." Everything I need to know for life I learned in my mother’s garden.



My mom takes pride in her garden. It’s not your typical garden with four tomato plants, small row of beans, a pumpkin plant, and you’re done. Her garden is a twenty-four foot by thirty foot chunk of yard that my mom tends to almost more than her twenty-year old daughter. Weeding the garden was my least favorite thing to do and something I always dreaded.

While weeding my mom’s garden on the early summer mornings, my mom would have me take out my iPod and listen to what she has learned from the weeds. She taught me that we could both go out and weed every day for a short amount of time or not very often for a very long time. The longer we waited to go out and weed the harder our job became. She compared different weeds to different behaviors. She taught me about the weed called "Morning Glory" that would spread itself out across the garden, wind around the strawberry plants and "strangle" them. The Morning Glory was always easy to pull out, as long as it was pulled before it had wrapped around the plant. Different behaviors in people’s lives can, just like the morning glory, strangle us and end up killing us spiritually, morally, or even physically. I never really appreciated these valuable moments with my wonderful mom until after I moved out and realized my mom had taught me an important lesson about work. The lesson I learned from my mom all those summer mornings in the garden can be summed up in a phrase from President Gordon B. Hinckley that is hanging above our kitchen window showcasing a perfect view of the garden:

 “Without work, nothing grows but Weeds.”

After working in my garden I came to adopt that saying. In life I feel that the best thing that a person can do is work their hardest and be proud of what they have accomplished. Through hard work, and hard work alone, a man can get what he wants most in his life. That lesson is happening more in my life now than it ever has. As I start my third year of college I constantly have to remind myself that life is hard work. And if I work hard enough, just like my mom's garden, I know that the fruits (and vegetables) of my labor will completely pay off.