Pruning

Yesterday, we woke up early with the goal to start pruning our yard.  This may not mean a lot to anyone, unless you have pruned these lovely plants, but we have a yard-ful of beautiful plants in the spring and summer, but in the winter we have a yard-ful of overgrown plants that are awaiting the pruning season to grow again.  We have an upwards of 45 lantana (typically 3 lantana's pruned fill one of our large garbage cans -- or 1 large black garbage bag with tons of sticks coming through the bag), we have 16 Mediterranean Palm trees, 7 African Sumacs, 5 canary dates, and 10 sago palms (these typically aren't anything hard except 5 of these were already planted when we moved in and are the largest sago palms I've ever seen 2 of them have 3 trunks).  Those are the cumbersome ones to prune, the ruellia, jubilees, chaste trees, and other small plants don't really count because they only take moments to prune.

Now back to the day, Sheldon was up and out in the yard before me.  Kindly our garbage men were just getting there.  They do one side of our street and then as they go around the community they come back and do the opposite side of our street.  They offered to empty the cans for Sheldon now and then would empty them again on their way back around.  That is about the time I showed up.  So Sheldon and I worked feverishly to try and refill the cans as quickly as we could.  Then we had empty cans one more time, but within about another hour they were filled again.  

Conner and Loryn showed up and began to help.  Loryn enjoys trimming the african sumacs and Conner looked forward to using the hack saw (power tool), and trimming the canary date palms.  As I continued trimming I realized the great satifaction that  comes with work. The thought came to mind from the "Family Proclamation" that "Successful marriages and families are established and maintained on principles of faith, prayer, repentance, forgiveness, respect, love, compassion, work, and wholesome recreational activities."  The satisfaction comes as we step back and realize the progress we have made, the same goes in life.

As a child I remember the winter and how often I saw trees pruned back to almost nothing.  I hated it.  I thought they were ugly and I didn't understand why anyone would ever do that to a beautiful tree with hundreds of branches down to nothing.  Then as we started our own yards in different homes I realized the need to prune.  I had done it in small ways with my grandma's and their homes for years, but didn't really realize what they were doing.  Just as the Lord teaches us.  We must go and "obey the commandments of the Lord" and "labor with their (our) might", the Lord will labor with us and we will have "joy in the fruit" (Jacob 5:69-72)

We only finished about 3/4 of the yard.  There is  a lot of garbage to pick up and we feel we have already piled enough in our street, but I am grateful that I was taught how to labor in the vineyard from parents, not only physically labor in our yard, but also spiritually labor in our Lord's kingdom.  I am grateful that we can continue to finish our laboring by all of working just a few minutes each day we will be completed by the end of the week.  I know it is through experiences like these that our faith is stregthened