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Pests are usually tiny, but if they are allowed to take over, they can destroy your garden.
In the organic garden, there are several ways to accomplish pest control. For chewing insects, like big worms, the easiest pest control may be simply picking them off each morning and disposing of them. For sucking insects like aphids, a soapy solution suffocates them, and even just blasting them with water from the hose will help get them off your plants. Natural garden predators, like ladybugs and the praying mantis may be happy to keep your garden free of pests. Ground red peppers are said to keep some insects away, and beer for snails is a classic.
Each strategy works against a different type of pest, and if one isn't working, it's easy enough to try another one.
In your creative garden, pests are the distractions that interrupt your creative time, and keep you from creating. Pests can be people, issues you can't get out of your mind, low-priority tasks, or anything else that keeps you distracted. It's good to remember, too, that not everyone's distractions are the same! For some people, trying to work in a noisy environment is not an issue, while for others it may be totally incapacitating. This brings up the importance of really honing in on what is at the heart of what is distracting you. It may not be what you think!
Like in your garden, you may have to try out different strategies to combat these pests.
The first part of your strategy is building awareness. What things prevent you from giving yourself permission to relax and devote yourself to your creative time? Are there specific people who distract you when you sit down to create? Do your own thoughts, feelings, or attitudes distract you and rob you of peace? Is your life filled with endlessly distracting trivia, so that you don't feel you can take time from it all to create? Is your work area cluttered, leading you into cleaning and organizing, rather than creating?
Identifying where the problem actually lies is the first step to taming those pests. There are two specific situations that I'd like to bring your attention to.
One occurs when distractions show up and we are not really ready to create anyway. We're uncertain, fearful, procrastinating a bit, and when a distraction comes along, it delivers us from this situation. We grab hold of it, and go off with the distraction, happy not to have to deal with our creative uncertainty. We are actually welcoming distractions in this situation, because they provide us with a perfect excuse to avoid a deeper issue. One place to look at this deeper issue is back with our garden's weeds -- negative thoughts. Are we feeling inadequate or hopeless? Perhaps we need some grounding and centering. Or are we simply uncertain about how to move forward? Perhaps we need to spend some time daydreaming about what we're wanting to create next, and how to go about it.
Distractions can also show up when we ARE ready to create, and steal away our time. When this is the case, we need to find ways to keep those distractions out of our creative time, at the very least. Another option, which will free up even more energy, is to get those distractions out of your life in general. This requires a bigger commitment of time, at least at first, but does make life a little easier in the long run.
Figuring out what purpose the distraction is serving -- whether it is a welcome or unwelcome visitor -- is key to figuring out how to deal with it.
If you find it to be a welcome visitor, it is time to stop and figure out what is really going on, to figure out what you are avoiding with the distraction. Many times this will tie back to some type of fear about creating.
If you find it to be an unwelcome visitor, then it is time to try out strategies until you find one that works. Teaching other people in your life about boundaries so that you have uninterrupted time. Clearing clutter so that your mind is as open as the creative space around you. Choosing to eliminate from your life things that do not contribute to your life or well being. Or clumping those distracting little tasks and details together to be dealt with at a common time.
In modern life, distractions are increasing. While some of these pests are not within our control, many of them are, and minimizing them will give us more energy for our lives. When our lives are overrun with distractions, then our creativity as a whole suffers, much like our garden.
At the very least, we can choose to make our creative time a pest-free zone! It's a great place to start. | 
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