To Everything There is a Season September 17, 2021 – Posted in: Celebrant
Nothing says “Goodbye Summer” quite as brutally as dead-heading the agapanthuses.
I couldn’t put it off any longer. Even Monty Don said it was time so, humming the Byrds 1965 hit Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season), I set to work cutting off the magnificent seed heads half way down each stem.
Before discarding all 91, I stuck them together in a large plastic tub. The arrangement that emerged was unique and splendid – a fitting tribute to the joy the live blooms had given us all summer.
The remaining beheaded plants looked bereft. They certainly deserved a cheering treat and I could hear my (late) mother reminding me to give them a good feed of Tomorite before tucking them up for the winter.
It felt sad to mark the passage of summer to autumn while acknowledging that winter is around the corner.
To Everything There is a Season, and a time to every purpose under heaven.
A time to be born and a time to die,
A time to plant (must buy some bulbs for the spring) a time to reap that which is planted (the beetroot and carrots and ready) … and so on …Turn! Turn! Turn!
There’s a lot to do.
It’s hardly surprising that the first eight verses of the third chapter from the biblical book of Ecclesiastes* is a popular reading at all life ceremonies – naming babies, weddings and funerals – it’s appropriate for many occasions… not just for gardeners struggling to come to terms with the rapid passing of time.
I am happy to report that the dead agapanthus heads get the last word: Layer upon layer of them standing proudly in their purple tub beside the brown bins it is quite clear that, if there was an award for the most attractive garden refuge display, they would win hands down !
- Except for the Turn! Turn! Turn! bit, the words of the Pete Seeger song (first recorded in 1959) are taken from Ecclesiastes.