As a child from a family of six children, I learned the importance of working in the garden and the responsibility of taking care of my section in the garden. One of the most important lessons I took away from that learning experience was that if you just put your mind to the chores that are given to you, you will be finished with them before you know it. It gives you a real sense of accomplishment to know you have done your part and helped out the other members of your family.

One day while working in the garden right along with my Dad, I ran into a problem and being a typical kid I immediately said that I could not overcome that problem. It was a very hot day and the sun was directly overhead and shade was a precious commodity. My Dad told me that I could handle the problem if I just gave it some thought. I tried giving the problem some thought but I had already convinced myself that I could not handle it so I didn’t spend a lot of time trying to figure out how I might handle the problem. A short time later my Dad happened to look over and saw that I hadn’t taken care of the problem. He asked me why and again I stated that I could not figure out how to handle it.

It was time to sit down in the shade and have a refreshing cool drink so we went over to the edge of the garden and found a cool spot to sit down and enjoy some lemonade my sister had brought out to us. As we sat there my Dad asked me what I had thought about as far as being able to take care of the problem I was having and I told him I didn’t even know how to go about getting started thinking about the solution to the problem. At this point he said he would like to tell me a little story about my great-grandfather. I was thrilled to hear about him as I had always admired him. Dad proceeded to tell me about great granddad’s experience with gardening that had started back when he was a child and lasted right up until he was in his late 80′s. By the time he was 80 years old he had become semi-invalid but was still determined to work his garden. He absolutely loved the fresh food he got from the labor he put into his garden.

As we all know, weeds are a very pesky problem that any gardener faces. Controlling the weeds is a very important part of having a healthy garden. My great granddad knew this but was faced with the paramount problem of being unable to move about freely in his garden to handle the weed problems. Knowing that weeds just don’t go away because you wish them to, he had to figure out how he could attack the problem and be efficient at getting the weeds under control. As he gave the problem some thought, he figured out that if he took an old wooden kitchen chair out into the garden he could sit in the chair and take his garden hoe to control the weed problem. He then decided that if he lashed two hoe handles together, he could reach out further and not have to move as often. It was just a matter of problem solving and after hearing the story my Dad told me I gave my problem some more thought and was able to come up with a solution.

The old moral stating that where there is a will there is a way is so true. The very next time you run into a problem that you believe there is no way to solve it, try to remember the story here and use it to your advantage. Any problem can be solved if it is given enough thought.

John Rowe The Yankee Gardener

http://www.theyankeegardener.com/

http://www.theyankeegardener.com/birdfeeders.html

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