Tending your own garden

Learn to cultivate your own garden.
--Voltaire

It is largely believed that when Voltaire had his character Candide state, "Learn to cultivate your own garden," he was sending the message that people need to mind their own business.

Or that is what I like to think he meant.

It is the season that I spend most of my free time on weekends cultivating my own garden...literally. Or perhaps more accurately,  I spend most of my free time weeding my own garden, and mowing my own lawn.

It is back breaking work. And my body aches when I'm done. I won't say I ache more at my age, because when I was younger, I didn't put much stock in yard work.

But now, with a family and a home that begs for constant yard work, I accept my fate. Part of it is that I don't seem to be able sit idle at home. I wonder in fact, how I filled my time when I was younger. Now I feel compelled to always be doing something.

Though there is Fortnite. That can easily occupy any time in between projects.

But I digress.

Unfortunately, the world is full of people who want to cultivate everyone's garden. And ironically, they do so while their own garden is choked with weeds. If they only knew how much relief they would feel if they just got back to tending their own garden.

And don't get me started on fertilizer.