Laziness

Lazy hands make for poverty, but diligent hands bring wealth. 
He who gathers crops in summer is a prudent son, but he who sleeps during harvest is a disgraceful son. (Proverbs 10:4-5)         

                I have been a gardener for years, but I’ve always been a lazy gardener. For years, I didn’t till the soil very much. Several years ago, I bought a mini-tiller, so I have gotten better about tilling. I plant the plants that I buy at the garden center and water them until they seem to be established, but after that, I’m not as good about watering. Where I really have a hard time is with weeding. One of the things they tell gardeners to do is use grass clippings for mulch. Unbeknownst to me, I’ve been sowing crabgrass into my gardens in the fall. If I had bothered to educate myself and to invest in my gardens, who knows how much easier things would have been? It seems to me that I have lived the bad side of both these proverbs. Fortunately for me, I don’t live in an agrarian society. Next spring, I hope to be a little smarter and more diligent about my gardening. I’ve seen some amazing pictures of the results others have had.
                Unfortunately, as I have been with gardening, I have been with much of my life, I fear. Oh, I’ve done OK, and I’ve done some good, but I can’t say I’ve done all I could or my best. And I’ve never worked as if my life or the lives of my loved ones depended on it. Fortunately, they never have. I know I can’t go from where I am to full throttle all at once, but I wonder what I can do to start changing my attitude from lazy to diligent. The first question, I suppose, is what is important enough in my life to treat as if my life depends on it.