About a month ago my rose bushes began exploding with blossoms, but most of the flowers are now well past their prime or have completely lost their petals, so I went outside to water and deadhead them. My Beloved was the one who taught me the value of deadheading many years ago. If I understand what she said correctly, plants continue to expend energy trying to keep alive flowers that are no longer viable, so if a gardener removes the dead flowers it enables the plant to focus all of its energy on productive ones, often rapidly generating a whole new wave of beautiful blossoms.

As I snipped away the old, I realized it was making way for the new, and in many ways my life is like a rose bush. I can be prickly at times, there are areas of my life that need trimming, and other areas on which I should bring greater focus.

In other words, I could deadhead various aspects of my life to get more beautiful results. No, I don’t plan to snip off various physical parts of myself, but there are certainly things that have clung to me or that I have clung to that should be deadheaded. As I begin creating the list below, I’m either mentally deadheading them or making plans to do so.

Negative thoughts about myself (snip)

Distractions that keep me from the important things in my life (snip)

Excess clutter (snip)

Excuses for not exercising more (snip)

I’m an on-going project, and as with flowers, deadheading is not a one-time endeavor, but the more I do it with my rose bushes and myself, the better I like the view.

With Love,
Russ