Deadheading

Channeling energy to new blooms…

I recently came across a video of my son Max at a heartbreakingly young age. Dusk on our back porch, Max sleepy and ready for bed in PJ’s and a little bathrobe, sits on the lap of my green-thumbed super-gardener wife Erica. I’d grabbed her digital video camera (formerly cutting edge now quaint) and determined to capture their golden hour sweetness. As I asked Max one of those million pointless parental questions meant to fill up the moments of digital video, he reached out with a pair of garden shears and started to clip a flower from Erica’s pot. I hear the anxiety in my voice from behind the camera’s viewfinder as I tell Max not to chop the head off that beautiful flower. Erica calmly tells me, “No. It’s fine. That’s what we’re out here doing right now. Deadheading flowers.” To his credit, Max hadn’t even paused in his task and you see him snip, and watch as a fat bloom cascades to the patio where petals explode around it.