It's too late to cut the chives

The story:

I was 6 or 7 when this song first came out, and I only ever heard it when
it was playing on the radio. I originally heard the lyric as "It's too
late to call the chives," but people don't call chives (obviously). I was
sure they were saying chives, so I figured that they must be singing about
cutting the chives. It seemed logical at the time. Flash forward about 4
years to when "Apologize" was a song in one of my piano books. There was a
moment of realization, and suddenly the song made a lot more sense.