More listening to flowers

There is a time for everything,

    and a season for every activity under the heavens:

     a time to be born and a time to die,

    a time to plant and a time to uproot,

     a time to kill and a time to heal,

    a time to tear down and a time to build,

    a time to weep and a time to laugh,

    a time to mourn and a time to dance,

     a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

    a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

     a time to search and a time to give up,

    a time to keep and a time to throw away,

    a time to tear and a time to mend,

    a time to be silent and a time to speak,

     a time to love and a time to hate,

    a time for war and a time for peace.

I have a love/hate relationship with social media. Most of the time I really enjoy Facebook; it allows me to keep up with friends old and new in ways that were never possible in the past. Among my Facebook friends, I have classmates I haven't seen since elementary school, friends (and a few former enemies) from high school, people I knew in college and seminary, former coworkers and church members, long-lost relatives, and many of my former students. It's usually fun to celebrate joys and sorrows with people I've known over the years; it's fun to see where life has led and is leading them; and it's interesting to be updated on their thoughts and what is important to them.

But some of the time, I'm saddened and bothered by what I read. People change, and grow apart, and sometimes you never really knew someone you thought you knew. I know some things about some of my Facebook friends that I wish I didn't know. (To be fair, some of them probably think the same about me!) When I see posts that are illogical,  intolerant, deliberately inflammatory, and/or designed to invoke fear and loathing of "the other", that's something I wish I didn't know about the person posting it. So, as I often do, I decided to walk away from the computer and work in our garden.

I started out deadheading coreopsis. Coreopsis is a large plant that thrives in our heat, and each plant has dozens of vibrantly yellow flowers on long stalks. Even after the flowers have faded and gone to seed, they're not unattractive, but I cut them off in order to extend the blooming period. I also throw the cutoff blossoms in places where I'd like for new plants to come up next spring. Since I hadn't deadheaded for several days, there was a lot of it to do, and as I cut back the stalks to a leafy part of the stem, I wondered if it would be a good idea to deadhead my Facebook friends list. There are people who I once knew who no longer bring joy to my life, and perhaps it is time to remove them.

Then I was surprised to see this yellow water lily. Possibly because of the aggressive way we went after the cattails that had taken over the pond, we haven't seen nearly as many blooms this year. Part of the reason we tried to remove the cattails was that the water lilies were being crowded out. However, since the cattail roots and the waterlily roots were intertwined, it was impossible to remove the cattails without disturbing the waterlily rhizomes. We've seen a few white blooms, but no pink, magenta, or yellow ones, and I wondered if those varieties were still alive. In the case of the waterlilies, the correct gardening technique as just to "let things lie".

Deadhead or let it be? That's always the question. There is a time for all things.