The Beauty Beneath The Trash

I'm going to tell you about what I did today and also use it as a metaphor. But! But there's a twist -- I'm not going to tell you what the metaphor is about. I won't do this because if I tell you what the metaphor is about, then that's all that it will be about. I want you to be able to apply it to whatever you think it fits. Going back to my very first post -- I don't want to limit my metaphor to just a single story. ;-)

Today I worked outside in the yard. Not exactly a surprising thing to do considering the time of year and all, but I wasn't planting or weeding or doing anything with a garden.

No, today I was out in my yard picking up trash.

A little backstory -- my husband and I rent a beautiful house with an enormous back yard. There's also a sweet little brook flowing along the edge of the property. At some point, somebody used the far left edge of the yard as a dumpster.

No, I'm not being hyperbolic. The area was literally used to dump trash. And then it was covered with brush and fallen limbs. I've spent the last six years attempting to clean it up. Again, I am not exaggerating when I say that I've barely scratched the surface. Every spring after all of the snow melts, I go out there and there's a whole new layer of trash revealed. I think I've thrown away more than a hundred pounds of trash already.

Now, I could let the landlord handle this. He could have a cleanup crew in to clean it up within a matter of days, but I like doing this myself. I like having the time to reflect and think which is what I did today and came up with this post.

Despite all of the trash, the soil is still healthy. Not as healthy as it could be, but it just needs a little bit of care. And love. It needs a whole lot of loving care to reach its full potential. But, when you sift away the trash and the roots, the ground is soft and dark and ready to be made great.

It's just the getting there that's hard. I've got this whole mound of potential that I have to dig through in order to work with. It's hard work and some days I just want to give up and forget about that corner of the yard.

But I don't. I don't because of days like today when I find little bits of treasure buried amidst the dreck. Today's find was an old glass Coca-Cola bottle. At least I assume it's a Coke bottle since that's what the twist cap says. Most of the glass I find is broken or cracked, but this bottle is in near-perfect condition. It's something that I'll clean up just a bit and set aside for later use.

Someday, that section of the yard will be full of green, growing things. It probably won't happen before we move, but it WILL happen. Of that I have faith.