Pruned to Produce More

A friend gave us some lovely Swiss chard plants this summer. They looked good enough to eat right away, but we planted them to grow even more, as she said they would spread out eventually. I love eating Swiss chard, so kept salivating every time I went out to the garden.

Finally, I decided I would cut the largest plant and enjoy it for dinner. I wasn’t sure if it would grow back or not, this late in the season. However, not even a week later, this big picture below is what I saw coming up from the plant I had cut.

The growth seemed to happen very fast. The large plant I cut had seemed to take a long time to get there. But I have a feeling it might have been ready to eat a long time ago and perhaps stopped growing very much. Now that it had been cut back, it had a lot more energy to grow quickly. I’ll probably be cutting them back a lot more often now that I see what happens. It will be interesting to see how long it takes to get to a nice “eating height” again!

I couldn’t help but relate this to my own life. There are times when I am somewhat fearful of letting go of what I see and know in order to move ahead in a different way. It also reminds me that when I come to a grinding halt or get stuck or slowed down in some area of my life, I need to cut some things back. Those good and productive things sometimes need to be tweaked or put on hold or discontinued to make way for new growth or better things to come. I also have found that de-cluttering my life – both my time and my space (as well as my head!) – helps me move ahead with new energy.

What are some good things that are past their prime in your life and need to be cut back or taken away? What fears do you have for discontinuing things in one area in order to hopefully grow or branch out in another area?

If you really think about, you know you need to just move ahead with what you know you need to do. You already know that the energy you’re using in stewing about things will be better used to propel you ahead to where you really want to go – if you’ll just take courage and go for it!