From a Chinese proverb: If the roots are not removed during weeding, the weeds will grow again when the winds of Spring blows.

One of my favorite shows used to be Extreme Home Makeover. Every Sunday night at 8:00p, you could catch me glued to my television with a box of Kleenex. I’d remembered how far the show had come from it’s very first project - rebuilding the home of a shooting victim in an impoverished neighborhood - to their latest and greatest. Along with their popularity and ratings soar came more product endorsements, an exorbitant budget, and more wiggle room to make homes better than the ones before it. No featured family was undeserving, each with their own struggle and sob story to pull at the heart strings of viewers.

But after you moved that bus and walked into your new home, after the camera crews, construction workers and design team had gone away for good, you and your family are left with this gorgeous peace of land - and a target on your back. You may walk into a lavish estate, a far better cry than the trailer they demolished seven days prior, but you are still in the same neighborhood. With the same neighbors. WIth the same element. In trailers.

We, the viewers, only know the city and state where the project is taking place. Your neighbors know your address. And now, because of the show, they know what the inside of your house looks like. What you have, what it does, and how much it’s worth. Whether you think all the warm, oowy goodness of a charitable act will spill out to surrounding areas, I say “maybe”. More often than not, it doesn’t.

ABC has done an outstanding job of hiding any reports of robbery or vandalism from those trying to become accustomed to their newfound wealth and good fortune. Very few stories reach media mainstream because no one wants to taint such a heartwarming moment with reality. Not everyone feels the warmth of charity when, just a few houses down, children are still hungry and parents are resorting to theft or unsavory part time jobs in the streets to make ends meet.

Mooter is scarily observant. At times, she’ll shock me with what she knows or thinks of. These past months, BFam and I have talked of moving and how it’s grown from a desire to a downright necessity. Mooter, forever the silent type, has made no mention to her knowledge of our discussions. Until Sunday night. On the way home from my mother’s, she made the announcement that she didn’t want to move. “I like the blue house, Mom. I don’t want to move.” After explaining that some of our neighbors would mean us harm should we stay, she was unconvinced and stuck to her “I don’t want to move” theory. That’s when I pulled the car over and threw her out the back window.

I’ve had friends ask if I’d consider renovating and eventually reselling, sort of like my other favorite show, Flip This House. I could say yes, why not? I’m not concerned with what could be done to the house. Houses are fixed, flipped, demolished and rebuilt everyday. They are also robbed.

You can plant a garden all you’d like. But if the weeds remain, you’re planting in vain.