I started cutting down trees, hedges and bushes with a chainsaw yesterday (Saturday). It was invigorating to be able to go in and cut out the rotting and diseased areas of my garden that have been invaded and plagued with bugs. If only we could do that in our personal life, writes Ruth Mave.

Garden work is a science and a lesson in patience and delayed gratification. I would often say that growing gardens was more satisfying than raising children. After all, by giving a plant all its necessary needs to grow to be its potential it will grow to be the potential. With children you can give them all they need to be the best they can be in the world only to have them sit back and let you look after them and continue to buy and provide for them after they have achieved adulthood and can earn their own money.  They say the first 40 years of motherhood is the hardest. 

There is an infestation in our gardens at the moment and it is threatening to take over and destroy our crops. Black ants, they say, arrived on a boat from China and they are everywhere.  They don’t just come in attracted to food or sugar left on the bench, they invade and come in just to make themselves at home. The cry for natural remedies to remove them is the talk of the town but it has come to the point of full on terminator extermination is the only way forward that works, for a while at least. 

My fruit trees are suffering. My hibiscus are white with aphids and black with ants and dying.  So despite all the good I had done to build a foundation of growing and supporting the plant so it can survive life and living on its own, it has been eroded away by the company they are keeping whether they wanted them or not. It is devastating to watch after all the work and hard labour has gone into them over the years, the hibiscus that is, my kids are fine. 

I had noticed signs prior and thought it would be alright and it was, until it wasn’t.  Now I find the only way to save it is to take the chainsaw to it and cut it to the strongest point of the trunk and throw away the rot and let the plant begin again. The good news is that the plant knows its purpose in life is to grow and produce flowers and or fruit so it does. In life sometimes we have rot in our personal lives but we either don’t see it or we leave it too late or we try all these feel good remedies that don’t make a dent on the problem. Then if we or life decides to cut us out of the relationship or strip us to our bare bones again, instead of growing back to our potential we had missed achieving before, we stay stunted and hurt and not willing to show or allow any growth to come through.

I cannot count the number of times I saw the signs and chose to ignore them. So instead of making a quiet exit and moving on to a better pathway fate dragged me out kicking and screaming. Love and loyalty mean nothing if the other person, workplace or team are not wanting you to be part of their life, strategy or goal. You can like them, you can be worthy but if they are moving in a different lane you will feel misaligned and out of place and ignored.  

So rather than try and fit the square peg into a round hole you need to get into your own lane. Sometimes it can be done by recognising the time has come to move on and resign yourself to doing such.  Other times due to your stubborn refusal to acknowledge, you will be dumped, fired, overlooked, cheated on. None of these make you feel wonderful, but it really can be the closing door, opening door scenario.  The other way is to see it for what it is and take a chainsaw to it and you be the one to make the cut away and put all the rot into a pile and burn it, get rid of it and forget about it. Nothing like a good bonfire to warm the cockles of your heartbreak.

The gurus are predicting this is a time of manifestation to create the life you really want to live, to believe is to receive. Why not choose to cut the toxic people's workplace food and situations out of your life and create a new one.  Be delusional and ask for the best life you can imagine. Then live it.