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The Next Stage July 26, 2010
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Greetings Friends of the Farm,

They had to go. Another, smaller crop of zinnias is growing well, and soon they will provide color. It is clear that the “old” zinnias should have been removed weeks ago -- The evidence is the presence of baby plants, sown by their parents’ blooms, volunteering hopefully (but foolishly, as they are in the wrong place -- the same bed) to replace their elders.

Even though the mature plants still had some pretty blossoms, today I mowed them and their offspring. The sounds of the slaughter: the pop of rocks, the snap of stems and stalks, and the quiet hurt of a very vibrant lavender blossom bent over -- waving to soft hearts anywhere, from its formerly lofty perch on its private stalk -- fluttering down, down, and disappearing under the belly of Lillian T. Tractor, meeting at least one of three sets of spinning blades.

I was too thirsty to take the extra step to cut all the reasonably good blooms, like the now-dethroned lavender blossom, for a last bouquet, perhaps a bouquet for the Marias, our wonderful harvest ladies. However, in an instant “rationalization” mode, brought on perhaps by dehydration, my nose wrinkled that it seemed a bit disrespectful to clip the glory of the zinnias right before their destruction.

Next to the zinnias, the heavy sun flower heads, left to provide seeds for the Monk parakeets, drooped heavily, almost to the ground, assisted down previously by the weight of the birds. They were beautiful in this transitional moment.

On to the next stage, they too bent to the blades.


Eventually, naturally, all parts of these annual crops wither away. And even the blooms on perennials such as Althea and Datura join them in the inevitable states of faded, wrinkled, dried, blackened, and “gone.”

The blooms are strangely beautiful in their decline, but after a big rain and then lots of sun, heat, humidity, the very active state of decomposition entices only someone interested in compost and organic matter for the soil. Devotees such as bugs, worms, bacteria, and I.

The plants haven’t really gone anywhere. They are still on the farm, useful, needed in death as well as in life, for they go back to the soil to nourish -- at this time of year -- the crops of winter.

I wonder though, if the plants think it’s alright to die? Given that, like a final prize, there is the assumption of another generation of them to follow, but how will they know if it is true? The plants were taken down “prematurely,”  before they succumbed naturally to a hard freeze, so they might feel cheated. Confident in my innocent ignorance of anyone’s life span, I told the flowers: winter is coming soon.

Very soon.

Larry and I can’t quite believe how the days, the weeks, go by so swiftly. It was just Monday -- last week’s Monday -- and here, an hour later, is this week’s Monday. A real parachute ride from life to death.

I remember planting the zinnias and sunflowers (“yesterday”) and now they are fallen stems and faded blooms, arranged like thrown-down pick-up sticks upon the soil. After they lie in state a few days, I’ll sprinkle them with sulfur, greensand, and compost, and bring in Jaws, with the hiller disks attached, to pull up the soil in the pathways and pile it atop the blanched remains of the flowers, burying what’s left of them, to begin bed preparation for the future crops.


It’s all a cycle. Larry’s hat, alive once -- made of straw, is in the next to last stage of its time on Larry’s head. The last stage comes after it gets blown off his head and is run over by the tractor. All of Larry’s hats meet this fate. In anticipation, and perhaps to rush this up a bit, Larry bought a new one, a next-crop hat. It should last two years also, like the battered one. I imagine that the old hat, sitting next to the new one is worried. Larry will still wear it of course, for it can take a few more stains. But eventually, that strong wind will come and roust it off the head it knows so well.

The hat will roll on the soft sand and meet the big tractor tire and be squashed. Like a tomato under your heel. Except that the sound will be crunchy, not juicy.

Saddened or frustrated, depending on the availability of another hat, Larry will stop the tractor, dismount and retrieve his old friend, who likely will suffer a permanently separated crown and brim. In that condition, it’ll be a bit too much, too trendy, to ride to town on top of Larry. It will have to accede to a new hat, that position. It will be time.


For there is a time and a season to everything...to zinnias, to sunflowers, to hats -- to a tiny butterfly in the driveway....

Carol Ann

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