Cercis: the seed pods of Doom!

This is what, as a gardener, you might call "a nuisance just waiting to happen"

 

Cercis siliquastrum still holding those darned seed pods!

What, exactly, are we looking at?

It's a Cercis, siliquastrum, a small flowering tree, which is still, despite the tremendous winds and bluster we've had this month, holding on to about a thousand seed pods.

Yes, those blackened, dangling things are the seed pods of this tree, looking rather like mange-tout on steroids, but far less appetising.

In summer, this tree looks like this:

Fabulous, isn't it? 

The trouble is, that every single one of those beautiful pink blossoms will, in time, turn into one of the blackened mange-tout-from-hell pods... which will then hang about on the tree for month after month, gradually falling onto the area below.

I've tried shaking the tree (couldn't budge it), I've tried poking at them with my extending spring rake (virtually no impact - maybe one or two fell) but they are firmly stuck up there, haunting me, taunting me, threatening me: "We're going to faaaalllllllll!"  "We're going to wait until you've raked up every last one of us from the grass and from the beds and then we're going to faaaaaaalllll!"  and - worst of all - "We're going to faaaaaalllll - but no more than thirty at a time! Yah boo sucks!"

I have a feeling that I'm going to be clearing them up for months.... and months....

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