Unwanted

     Micah and I shingled most of a house between the rains last Friday and Saturday. Friday afternoon was miserably hot and we had to replace a section of sheeting. When an addition was added to the house they sheeted it with OSB board. My Dad called it particle board and I despise the stuff just like he did. It can not handle any moisture. The shingles had been poorly installed and water had seeped in around a roof vent. We could remove the sheeting by the handful. 

      While we were working around the house I saw there were a lot of trees growing in the flower beds. Thought I would have to do something about that before they got completely out of hand.

     Tuesday I was finishing the flat roof over the patio when a woman called to me from the neighbor's yard. "Are you the owner of that house." Although I probably should have told her "no, I just like to randomly wander around town and work in the hot sun" I said yes I was. She then asked if I would cut down the trees and remove the blackberry bushes behind the garage. I was on the roof and did not go down to look at what she was talking about. I like to have good relations with the neighbors, so I said sure. I will take care of it. I assumed the trees and blackberry bushes were growing wildly through the fence and into her property. It is best I did not go look right then, because I might have told her to get a life. First of all I might have asked her where her property line was. Because if our garage wall is right on the property line, which is possible, maybe, a lot of strange things happened back in the day, her fence connects to our garage 6 inches inside the north wall of the garage. Municipal code states a fence needs to be 12 inches inside your property so this fence is at least 18 inches too far south and is on my lot. Then there were 2 canes of blackberry plant growing through the fence and no tree limbs or branches or even twigs over the fence. So snip off the blackberry canes on your side and leave me alone. Like I said it was a good thing I didn't look while she was there.    

     I did not want the trees growing behind the garage anyway so i cut them down and drug them across the lawn and loaded them up to take them to the city leaf dump.

     I sprayed the stumps with Tordon to hopefully get them killed so they do not grow back.

     I could not make myself spray and kill the blackberry plants so I hooked them and drug them back away from the fence. Yes they will straighten back up, but at least the neighbor will know I moved them back from the fence. (sure they will go back but that is just too bad. It's still on my side of the fence.)

     Then I started spraying trees in the flower beds with weed spray. I might have mixed it a little heavier than the instructions. 

     I was thinking maybe I had gotten a decent response because the leaves were wilting pretty good by Thursday.

    Most if them were curling real nice.

     Some even had brown spots on the leaves.

    But by week's end they were starting to recover.

    Yes I believe the patients will live. They are recovering nicely. I am going to have to look for a herbicide labeled for trees or brush. 

     The trees need to be removed. They will ruin the flower beds. The ones that are close to the house will eventually put pressure on the foundation and if left to grow will damage the siding and the roof as the wind whips their branches back and forth as they grow ever larger. Soon the whole yard will be shaded by trees that were not meant to be there and the flowers and the grass will die. The property will get an abandoned look and the value will fall.

     I wonder how many of us have trees growing in our lives. What seems almost like a harmless sin that starts out small but will continue to grow if it is not weeded out. Oh sure, no one knows about it now. Its' not hurting anyone else. It's not even really hurting me even though I know it's something I know I should not do. Does that thought pattern ever run though your mind? 

     The thing is, that is how the devil likes to work. He likes to worm his way into your life with small seductions. But they grow and they grow until they consume your life and your life is in tatters. If you have a sin growing in your life like an unwanted tree in the flower bed, dig it out. Sins are like trees the longer they are left to grow the harder it is to get rid of them.Weed the garden and bloom with the flowers that God plants in your life.