Clean Out that Watering Can

What is our leaf and dirt litter in our lives that is keeping us from fully embracing new opportunities or that might be holding us back from fully enjoying some enriching experiences? Let’s clear it out so our lives flow more freely and authentically.

This morning was a pivotal morning because it was the first time I had to water my plants. It’s wonderful thing to know that for months on end, if I leave on a week-long trip, my outdoor plants will be completely fine until around this time of the year. This is because it rains frequently enough that adding more water is completely unnecessary in almost all cases where I live.

So I made it into a bit of a ceremony as I like to do with starts of things like many more things than just summer water routines. I dumped out the wet mixture of leaves and dirt and old spider webs that had accumulated inside the watering can over the winter and washed and dried the outside. Then I filled the large watering can to the brim and commenced the inaugural watering session of summer.

I live in a four story condominium complex in an urban center, so all of my outdoor plants are on a large balcony, which one might think might not hold all that many plants. But let me tell you, after a decade of living in my current place and having a few of the plants the whole time means that the plants by now have become quite substantial. I also have some fairly large new fruit trees that I have in big pots that I’m growing from bare root starts and so I make sure they get good drinks.

After completing the second refilling of the watering can and just before I starting filling for the third and final water filling to polish off the last few plants, something dawned on me. I had been so focused on the visible parts of the watering can that I totally overlooked the nozzle where the water actually flowed out. Soon after I started watering with the first load of water, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be much pressure flowing out and when the water dwindled down to a trickle, I automatically thought first that I just needed to refill the watering can.

With just a few seconds’-worth of examination of the funnel that leads the water out the nozzle, I quickly discovered that there were leaves and dirt debris blocking up part of the exits on the nozzle and that was making it so that the water wasn’t coming out as freely as it should and it also made that there was water left over in the watering can that I wasn’t using. Each time I replenished the can, several ounces of water was left over.

What is our leaf and dirt litter in our lives that is keeping us from fully embracing new opportunities or that might be holding us back from fully enjoying some enriching experiences? Are there some habits we are yet to fully commit to changing? Are there time management quagmires that are sucking up our time and energy without paying back in a residual return on investment? Are there relationships we know we should cut ties with our dedicate more towards?

The wonderful thing about making realizations like these is that once we are honest enough with ourselves to admit that we could use some adjustments and some “nozzle cleaning” the difference can often be immediately felt and seen just like with the last refill of water that I poured on my eager plants. Once that leaf and dirt litter was gone, there was nothing to keep the water from flowing freely.