| |
|
A neighbor of
mine in the village
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A
childlike thing.
One day she asked her father
To
give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap
herself,
And he said, "Why not?"
In casting
about for a corner
He thought of an idle bit
Of
walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he
said, "Just it."
And he said, "That ought to make you
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to
put some strength
On your slim-jim arm."
It was
not enough of a garden,
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't
mind now.
She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrow
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away
and left
Her not-nice load.
And hid from anyone
passing.
And then she begged the seed.
She says
she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
A hill each of potatoes,
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even
fruit trees
And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is
hers,
Or at least may be.
Her crop was a
miscellany
When all was said and done,
A little
bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
Now
when she sees in the village
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, "I
know!
It's as when I was a farmer--"
Oh, never
by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the
tale
To the same person twice.
|
|
|
