Yesterday, as I was spending an idyllic 5 minutes in the backyard with the kids, without my phone, I noticed: there are weeds growing on our roof.

I’m not talking about those little dandelion roots that are mildly annoying if you actually care about your lawn. I’m talking about those 3-4 foot, fat marijuana looking plants that usually prompt a nasty note from your HOA. Perched happily at the ledge of our 30 foot roof.

The fact that they’re so tall, and I’ve just noticed, tells you just how much I like being outside in the summer. In Georgia. Where it’s usually at least 85 degrees, but feels like Satan’s armpit.

Of course, that never stopped my mother, who lovingly adorned the yard of my childhood home with daylilies, azaleas, a camellia bush, hanging impatiens, and hydrangeas under the sycamore. And in their retirement home, a garden: raised bed with an assortment of vegetables, her heirloom Texas roses–and peonies, still in infancy, which she gushes over every time I visit. They even have a plum tree in the front yard, which leaned over half the driveway for weeks, heavy with fruit. And when it was ripe? She canned jam and plum ketchup.

Then there’s me. When I went to college out West, I thought it would be nice to have a little plant in my dorm room. I thought, “It’s a desert, I’ll get a cactus.”

It died.

I had a roommate once who had a plant. When she moved out, she left it behind–and it turned into this yellow arthritic looking . . . thing. I never even knew its name.

At one point in my life, during my long stretch of singlehood (long for a Mormon, at least), I briefly contemplated the implications of the over-used metaphor that there is a “garden” inside every woman.

I decided it was a stupid metaphor.

When I got married, and spouse had a yard, I thought, Maybe there’s hope for me yet! So I made a simple plan: take out huge, ugly juniper, add grass, add plants that don’t need me. This is the South, I thought. Surely there are some flowers that will grow despite me.

Fast-forward one year. The hosta have shriveled to paper from too much sun. One lantana didn’t come back. But the bulbs: for two weeks in early March, while the grass is still brown, the little green shoots come up, and blossom into white daffodils and purple hyacinths, and smell heavenly. Then, when spring is really starting to get going, their heads wilt into sad little brown commas, like those footies at DSW that you use if you don’t have socks.

Now? We have TWO ACRES. Because my husband wanted “land.” So we can have a garden. And “animals,” which he somewhere along the line upgraded from “dog” AND revealed at a group gathering, which was HILARIOUS.

So in addition to the weeds on the roof, we have about 100 pine trees to take out so that grass actually might grow, so that the mosquitoes don’t eat us alive, and 3 dead ones that have been hanging out for a year, one steadily becoming its own ecosystem.

(In my defense, I had my second child 3 months after we moved in. Moms: you understand.)

When my 4-year-old daughter, who loves “watering the weeds” all because of an episode of Curious George, was given a watering can and seeds for her April birthday, I thought, There’s still hope for our family! She’ll be great at this! And went out and bought a planter and potting mix, we planted green onion seeds, and watered every day for 10 days, and saw little green shoots come up!

And three months later, said planter shows zero signs of life.

I LOVE the idea of walking out into a cute little raised bed plot, situated at the bottom of our sloping backyard by the cypresses, perhaps surrounded by some chicken wire to keep the deer out, and picking fresh tomatoes for dinner.

I LOVE the idea of teaching my daughter where food comes from, how to tend to living things, how to love the feel of life between her fingers.

But I have also come to accept my limitations. As a SAHM of two kids, I can’t do everything. So what do I hold onto? What do I let go of? I ask myself, are there REAL spiritual ramifications for this temporal choice, or are they fabricated by the culture (family or otherwise) around me? Whenever possible, I teach my children gospel principles in ways that don’t require suffering; God will give me plenty of that when it’s necessary.

So I buy a canned food rotation system and a bread machine and a generator and a deep freezer. But I don’t garden.

I choose playing the piano and writing on Thursdays. I crochet baby blankets (usually while watching something from Netflix), and shop for random things on Amazon that are impossible to find at the store, and figure out an inexpensive way to one day decorate that junk room. I take my kids to the park and playdates with mom friends so we can complain about our kids and go to the gym so I have energy to do all this.

But I don’t garden.

What things have you “let go” of to find peace and balance? How do you decide which commitments are a burden, and which contribute to the well-being of yourself or your family?