Gone to seed

The summer flowers are nearly over; but don’t rush to
cut down their skeletons; enjoy the subtleties of their weird and
beautiful seed heads first. The hairy shock heads of Clematis
Tangutica remind me of Barbie dolls. What weird little minaret
rattles the poppies form, peppering out a thousand seeds.

Look at
those iris pods perfectly packed; and the velvet bobbles of
Heleniums. Dierama, once an airy
“angel’s fishing rod” of flowers, sags under the catch. Plumey
heads of Cortaderia, six feet high, wriggle and dip drunkenly under
the massed weight of scores of sparrows and small birds feasting on
their seeds. The empty husks lie in drifts on my
kitchen windowsills or get tangled in the spider webs.

That’s
another good reason to leave dry seed heads on, for the pleasure of
watching greedy birds prise out the treats. Teazels, Fennel and
Dierama attract the goldfinches and wrens fossick in the clematis
fluff. The sparrows went mad earlier when the Phormiums were
in flower, dipping for nectar until their faces are stained yellow
and red with pollen; but I don’t know if any bird eats the
flat seeds that scatter when those twisted triffid pods flay
open.

The yellow Tree Paeony’s rude bulgy pods have burst under the
strain of their glossy fat black seeds … almost guaranteed to
germinate. The Crocosmia stems hold rows of buttons and the
Primula shuttle cocks
are handsome enough to pick. And best of all, whatever seeds the
birds don’t take will fall back to earth, to surprise me next year.