Weeding

This morning I was out working in the yard. We have the day off for President's Day because we live in a place where we don't have snow days (although we do have the occasional hurricane day). I was out pulling weeds and throwing down mulch and sort of admiring how tidy it mostly looks (my mom was here for a long weekend and she LOVES to pull weeds, go figure). Anyway, as I was pulling weeds out there, I was thinking about the inventory I've been doing in the media center. I've been pretty heartless about weeding some of the books that are old and tired looking. I thought weeding in the yard isn't really that much different from weeding in the library. As you weed, you're pulling out things that are old and tired or don't belong. Although at school when I'm weeding, people tend to be a bit more alarmed than when I weed at home. "You're throwing that away? I love that book!" The good news is at school we have a bin where we can put things for people to take, sort of a "Old books for new homes" kind of place. That way, people can take those books that I find to be too worn out to keep in the media center and recycle them in their classroom libraries or give them to kids who just love them (even if the cover is falling off). At home, I only have a compost heap to throw my weeds in and no one ever goes there and says "Why did you pull that out? I was saving that!" at least not if I'm careful.

 The other good part about weeding is that you can look around and appreciate some of the things that you haven't noticed because things have grown up around them. Some of the books we have that are really great end up jammed on a shelf and no one notices them because they are so overwhelmed by all the other stuff you have to wade through to get to them. So even though things will look a little bare for awhile, things will fill in around them. Things you had forgotten about can come to the forefront and you might even have room for something new and pretty that you didn't think you really needed.