To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

(Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

This is a bittersweet time of the year for me.

Trying to hold on to the last hint of summer, we spent a long weekend at the beach last week fishing, biking, and getting some rest.

This morning however the temperature was 34 degrees, signaling that it was the time of the year to give up the sanctuary of our back yard that we worked so hard in the spring to build, and begin to get ready for winter.

The time to pluck up that which was planted.

The first time I held my wife’s hand early in our courtship I remember saying to myself, “man, this girl has some rough hands!”

A farmer’s daughter, growing up working on the farm, created those tough hands.

And on a day like this, the time for plucking, that kind of wife comes in real handy.

So this morning the annual ritual of taking down the banana trees began.  This was the most prolific year we have had with our banana trees, and they produced many “pups.”  They also grew bigger than they ever had before.

One by one we dropped them down leaving about four to six inches of the plant above the ground.

We collected the leaves of the hardwood trees that had fallen, having served their purpose now laying in colors of red, orange, yellow, and brown in our yard.  These leaves will serve a different purpose now, to try to preserve the life of what was left of the banana in the ground as winter sets in.

So we covered the short stumps of the banana trees with the dead leaves.  On top of the leaves we laid the clippings of the tall grasses from our yard leaving some of the grasses up for the birds and as protection for the fish in the koi pond.  Then finally on top of the dead leaves and the tall grasses, we made a thick layer using the leaf of the banana trees themselves.  Some of these leaves were over six feet long.

Once the banana trees were tended to we dug up the bulbs to be brought inside for the winter and wrapped the palm trees with bubble wrap and a bed of pine needles.  This will be my first experience with trying to get a palm tree through a winter.  With bubble wrap and duct tape, the four trees I planted this year in the yard were ready.

It was a good day, and now as I sit on my deck without the privacy of my banana trees, I realize they had served their purpose all summer long, and today we served ours, working hard all day to hopefully bring them back again in the spring.

Yesterday our mail contained an envelope addressed to Donny from the Franklin Mint.  After seventeen years to get a piece of mail addressed to Donny caused a bit of a pause.

Because I guess I realize that to every thing there is a season.

And I understand a time to plant and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

But sometimes it’s hard to understand why that to those who are born, the time to die could come so quickly.

Couldn’t we have just wrapped them in bubble wrap and duct tape just that one time and protected them?

I don’t suppose.

I guess there is a time to every purpose under heaven, even if we don’t understand.