Summer dead heads

click photo to enlarge
The seasons impose a regular routine on the gardener. Three seasons of lawn cutting with a peak in mid-summer is something with which most English gardeners are familiar. The autumn tidy of vegetable plot and borders is another. And so too is the dead heading of flowers.

The casual gardener doesn't always appreciate the power and purpose of dead heading, neglects to do it, and consequently has a poorer display of blooms. What dead heading achieves is interference with the biological imperative to reproduce. The pelargoniums (also known as geraniums in England) in the photograph above produce seed from the flower heads and if they are left to do so put all their effort into that task. However, if the flower heads are removed as they fade and before they begin to produce the seed, then they will grow more flower heads in an effort to compensate for their loss. Consequently the gardener's display will be all the better for this little bit of work.

The summer months see me, bucket in hand, doing the round of the flowers, dead heading and putting my collection in the compost. But, prior to disposing of them, I often take a snap or two of the fading beauty before it enters the biological cycle.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: Pelargonium and Begonia Dead Heads
Camera: Olympus E-M10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 25mm (50mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/160 sec
ISO:200
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Autumn dead heads

click photo to enlarge
The pattern of life slowly emerges as you age. From early punctuations, such as birthdays, holidays and Christmas, more are added with each passing year - a new school year, new college terms, a new house, your children's birthdays followed all too rapidly it seems by their departure as adults, then, in later life, the passing, with ever greater frequency, of people that you know.

As a background to the milestones of our human lives there are the constantly changing seasons. You are taught about these as a child, and you understand them at a literal level. However, it's not until you have more than a few decades under your belt that their rhythm becomes an integral part of your life. At least that's how it's been with me. When I was a child I felt the seasons. As a youth, a young man, particularly when work became one of my main focuses, I lost that proper feeling for the different times of year. Since I stopped paid work that has returned and assumed its rightful place as one of the pleasures of my life. I've said elsewhere in this blog that I relish every season's differences and am daily thankful that I live at a geographical latitude that has clearly differentiated seasons.

I gave thanks again the other day as I went about one of my early autumn jobs - collecting in a bucket the fallen crab apples and the cast-off begonia blooms. I was drawn to the faded beauty of dead heads a couple of years ago and posted a picture then. I noticed it again when I piled so many begonia flowers on top of the crab apples that I completely hid them from view. The natural vignette provided by the shadow of the rim of the bucket made the yellows, oranges and reds radiate one final, passing glow, and I recorded it in this photograph.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 122mm (183mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f5.6 Shutter
Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:140
Exposure Compensation: 0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On