The Root of all Evil...

A few months ago I got this brilliant idea. The bushes out in front of our house needed some cutting back. They were fan palms and getting a bit out of control. As we were cutting them back we noticed an over abundance of roaches. Since having a bush that houses roaches is a decidedly bad thing, we decided the thing had to go. What we discovered is that it was easier said than done. These roots wind around each other, and some go really deep. It took a really long time to even get a hole dug, but after we got the first root ball out we thought for sure now that we knew how to do it we could get it out no problem.

BIG PROBLEM! They just kept going around and around and around each other.

So as I got to thinking about all this trouble we were going through I thought about the old saying "the root of all evil".  Some times in our lives there is something that we do or say that we know is wrong. We know and therefore we end up justifying it over and over in our heads and hearts. Causing the lie to take root in our heart and the more we justify it the more the roots of "evil" just start to wrap themselves around and make it impossible to get rid of . Eliminating one root, just exposes a new branch of the root. The root of all evil or mother root is often at the center of a big root ball and often headed quite deep into the ground holding the whole thing solid. Can we get rid of the roots of evil in our lives? Yes, but it's gonna take a lot of work. Who do you need to appologize to, or confess to? Where is your root of evil, what one action or word started it.  

Now just so you know this cross is not intended to bless the evil out of this root of all evil, it was meant to deter people from stepping into the whole. For nearly a month the whole looked something like this as we worked our way accross the bush. So now I know you are wondering if we ever got this beast out of the ground, well yes we did! Like removing evil from our lives it took time, and a lot of effort. To get them out we dug out the underside of the root ball a little at a time until we found the core root and then we just pulled it out. My upper arms are skinnier than ever with all the added effort and whacking with a pick ax and then a pitchfork and a shovel.

As you can see we also removed a few other things from the front of our house. We also had to remove the 3 cyprus trees. Turns out the roaches that were in that difficult bush were just the top of the iceberg, the cyprus trees were at their maximum age and it was turning brown because cockroaches like to eat it's bark. YUM right? They would eat the bark all the way around a branch and then the branch would die. You've never seen roaches until you've seen how many came out of that tree.  I wish we had thought to take a photo of the cockroach gettysburg that existed outside out house that afternoon. This is the only one I have and it doesn't even come close to showing the full magnitude of how many roaches came out of the tree.

This was after sweeping them away twice, an hour later this was what we had again. The good news is while it was expensive to get rid of those trees, the guy who did it was over half the price of the other guys and did a really good job, and our roach problem is pretty much gone. hehe, my favorite part.

Plus look at the front of my house, it's a blank canvas waiting for some fun planting to happen. I can't wait!