For the last 2+ years (maybe more?), we’ve been planning to take out these three bushes behind the house and replace them with raised-bed gardens. Actually, I’ve been cutting them down as close to the ground as possible for that long. They grow like weeds, so I wanted to catch them this year before they had a chance to get even bigger later into the spring.

Ugly root balls of two out of the three bushes dug out of our backyard.

So, today we drove over to Beisswenger’s to buy a mattock to help chop the roots of these pesky bushes in order to get them out - and pick up some other birding/spring backyard needs at the same time. Unfortunately, they didn’t have exactly the tool we wanted (although we bought a ridiculous amount of bird things and ran into a dear friend). When we got home, though, I thought to myself: "I’ve been wanting to take these out for years, I should just see how hard it would be to dig around them." So, I grabbed a shovel and consciously thought to myself that it didn’t matter to me if I finished the project today or just tested to see what it would take. They were already super ugly and budding out with leaves, it didn’t matter if they were also showing their root balls and half-assed dug up.

I stepped on the shovel pointing into the dirt next to the plant, and it sunk down snapping roots easily as it went. I dug all the way around the first plant, and to my surprise, I was able to simply lift off the pieces of plant - most of those pieces were dead after years of extreme trimming. I had dug all three out in the time-span of about 15 minutes. No mattock necessary.

Why had I not done this years ago? Why hadn’t I even tried? After all, I’ve had the parts to build the raised-beds for probably two years as well, if not more. I expected it to be difficult.

I got to thinking, what other things would be easier than anticipated if we just tried? What other things just need to start? Don’t get me wrong, I know that not all things we dread turn out to be simpler than we plan. But, have you ever had this experience? Have you ever pushed something off for longer than you should just because you expected it to be difficult?