Weeds

Over the last thirty years, in-between falling down, front-palm push-up, sitting in One Pointed Zen meditation for what felt like five years but was probably only five minutes at a time, and encouraging hundreds of people to achieve more than they thought they could, I’ve built a few kung fu schools. They’re called Kwoons, or training halls.

For my third school, I decided to rent an entire residential house: 3 bedrooms, an open-plan lounge and dining room, bathrooms, kitchen, swimming pool and a large garden. I figured I only needed one bedroom, and the rest of the house could be used for training. Students could use the kitchen to make smoothies, or tea after class. They did. My personal closed-door Si Fu lived out of town and twice a year I would fly him in for some personal training. Having a spare bedroom was useful for that.

The garden was really useful too. We dug plum blossom poles into the ground so we could spar while only moving from one pole to another. Each pole was only wide enough for one foot. It’s an incredible exercise for developing spatial awareness, balance while getting repeatedly kicked and punched. On wonderful, sunny evenings, we would practice outside on the grass as the sun set. Or we’d sit and meditate under a full moon.

A quick dip in the pool was very refreshing after three hours of Shaolin Quan kung fu.

It was awesome. But it came with a catch - I had to keep the garden neat. 

The first part of the catch was the grass. There was about 600m2 of kikuyu grass surrounding the house. Kikuyu grass is a monster and is considered an invasive species in South Africa. It’s so prevalent though that as invasions go, it was a successful one. It’s perennial, only growing when there’s a lot of rainfall. Johannesburg doesn’t get any rain for about 8 months from autumn through to late spring. During that time, the grass turns eighty different shades of brown and dies. Not really though. Once the summer storms start again, it miraculously revives itself and grows so fast that within a week it can be half a metre tall. 

That meant that during the dry months I never had to mow the lawn, but during the wet months, I had to mow the lawn twice a week. On the calendar it went.

The second part became the bane of my existence: Khakibos. Khakibos is a hardy pioneer plant from North and South America, naturalised in South Africa as an invasive weed. It should be more accurately described as a demonic plant. It grows anywhere and steals the water and nutrients from the soil, killing everything around it. Once the summer rains started, little shoots would pop up throughout my flower beds.

Here’s the problem though: instead of me diligently pulling out the weeds when they were tiny shoots, they would whisper in my head.

“I should pull those khakibos shoots out now while they’re still small,” I would think to myself.

“No, you may mistakenly pull out something useful and beautiful,” the demon plant would whisper in my head and I would walk away leaving the shoots to grow.

A week later the plants would be as tall as my hand. “OK, I have to pull them out now.” I would again think to myself. “I can see exactly where they are.”

But, as I bent down to start pulling them out of the ground, the plant would again whisper in my head. “No, you must mow the lawn. It is more important.” The Khakibos continued to grow as I neatly mowed the lawn.

Within six weeks, the Khakibos was 1.8m high and each stalk was at least 40mm thick. It was also reaching the mid-thirties Centigrade by that time. So, when I finally took a shovel to that  Khakibos it took me two days to dig it all out, I had a two square metre pile of garden refuse that I had to get rid of, and I was sunburnt and suffering from heat exhaustion.

Did I learn my lesson the first year? Yes. I learnt the lesson. But every year was the same - I knew what I should do, but I didn’t do it in time.

Our communities are like gardens, and we are each a gardener. A weightless seed may float over your wall on the wind and take root in your garden, poisoning your plants. A shadow may watch you from the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to steal your peace, your sovereignty, or even your life. Or worse, your life loses its colour and love, poisoned by structures and systems we have no control over. Your heart turns black and dies.

Tend to your garden daily. Pull out the weeds while they’re still young and small. Leave them, let them fester, grow, and kill the beauty around you, and it may take years for you to dig them out of your life later.