The Root of the Problem
The stump in question…
My backyard was a tangle of weeds, overgrown plants, and a giant vine. Two years of Seattle rain had transformed neglect into a jungle eyesore. While the Pacific Northwest can be an emerald dream, untended, you’ll find moss growing over moss.
With visions of a Tuscan vineyard, the previous owners had planted a grapevine that produced an abundance of inedible grapes. To my dismay, not only were they plentiful, they created a wet, gooey mess in late summer. My Tuscan vineyard must have received top ratings on the wildlife Yelp site, as I found new types of droppings littering my backyard daily. My neighbors and I regularly played, ‘What animal was here?’ Looking back on our game, I now wonder if there’s an app for that? Apparently, there is: the Whopoo app. But back to my story.
The vine, after it was separated from the stump. I let it dry out for a few months, to make it easier to pull apart.
It was time for a change: I took a saw to the vine and left the stump, as I’m an optimist and hoped that ignoring it would make it go away. Every so often, I thought I heard the stump laughing at me, late at night when everything was quiet. When I checked the area, I noticed new shoots pushing up as if to say, ‘Silly girl, you missed a spot!’
It soon became clear that I had to finish this project once and for all. The roots were thick and stubbornly entrenched, like my neighbor’s bamboo plants that continue to send runners to my side of the fence. It would require muscle and persistence, both of which had been sitting on the shelf these last few months. I started digging, an archaeologist searching for evidence of poor landscape design. One by one, I sawed at each root, the sweat soon making me eligible for a spontaneous wet T-shirt contest.
My brain was also hard at work, offering suggestions like ‘This is too hard, let’s just keep ignoring it’, or ‘What if we just sell this place and move? Then this is someone else’s problem!’
Thankfully, another more helpful voice piped up, possibly belonging to my inner coach, or maybe a helpful West Seattle Nursery employee who had secretly followed me home. “You did this before in Redmond. It was a bigger tree, and you got it out. Even when the neighbors were peering through their windows, wondering what in the world she was doing?”
One by one, I loosened the stump’s grip on my garden. It finally came free, and I was left wondering: might the local wildlife put a secret hex on my home, now that I had destroyed their favorite restaurant?
The same area last month without the stump but definitely overgrown.
I learned three lessons during this process:
Persistence is sweaty and dirty. It’s staying with something, even when you’re covered in mud, your legs are achy, and it’s about to rain. It’s acknowledging every small victory, even when your gardening gloves are dirtier inside than they are outside.
Ignoring problems doesn’t make them go away. You have to dig out the stump. This is why coaching is a commitment in time and money. Someone has to help you dig out your old entrenched roots and beliefs: the ones that lie deep below the surface. You can hack away all you want at the stems and leaves, but until you start working with the core, you’ll stay where you are with little progress. I believed that my yard should magically maintain itself while I stayed indoors watching gardening shows. Once I let that go and got to work, miracles started to happen.
Like a Lego structure, self-confidence is built brick by brick. My yard work started with pulling weeds and cleaning up twigs. It soon moved to stump removal, and I eventually found myself moving ferns the size of a giant pumpkin. My thinking evolved from ‘this is too much work’ to ‘look what I can do!’. (Cue Stuart from MadTV)
When it’s time to take out the trash, I now pass the spot where the stump once teased me. It reminds me of what I can accomplish when I set my mind to something and turn down all social invitations for a week.
Are there any stumps in your life demanding extraction? Probably.
Are they metaphors from something deeper? Almost certainly.
Will removing them require sweating, swearing, and discomfort disguised as anxiety? Definitely.
But there’s a real satisfaction in looking at my now lovely backyard and knowing I created it entirely through my own determination and a simple saw from the hardware store.
The work is finished! The vine stump used to be directly behind the Japanese Maple tree.