Outside in my dressing gown
yorkshirerose
Posts: 574
in Plants
Does anyone have a favourite poem, or story which relates to their gardening activity?
Mine is by Liz Cowley;-
I'm outside in my dressing gown-
I often am at half past seven,
when plants are waking up.
To me, that is the time of heaven.
The builders on the roof next door
were once surprised to see me there,
amazed to watch me pottering
in slippers and with unbrushed hair.
Thank God they've learned to look away,
accepting there's a nut next door
who's up and out and not yet dressed-
they don't look startled anymore.
They do their own thing, I do mine-
they glance at me, then look away.
I'm glad they have accepted it-
the way I like to start my day.
Mine is by Liz Cowley;-
I'm outside in my dressing gown-
I often am at half past seven,
when plants are waking up.
To me, that is the time of heaven.
The builders on the roof next door
were once surprised to see me there,
amazed to watch me pottering
in slippers and with unbrushed hair.
Thank God they've learned to look away,
accepting there's a nut next door
who's up and out and not yet dressed-
they don't look startled anymore.
They do their own thing, I do mine-
they glance at me, then look away.
I'm glad they have accepted it-
the way I like to start my day.
A gardener's work is never at an end - (John Evelyn 1620-1706)
0
Posts
Spring and Fall by Gerard Manley Hopkins.
To a Young Child
Márgarét, áre you gríeving
If you live in Derbyshire, as I do.
Being Boring
'May you live in interesting times.' Chinese curse
If you ask me 'What's new?', I have nothing to say
Except that the garden is growing.
I had a slight cold but it's better today.
I'm content with the way things are going.
Yes, he is the same as he usually is,
Still eating and sleeping and snoring.
I get on with my work. He gets on with his.
I know this is all very boring.
There was drama enough in my turbulent past:
Tears and passion - I've used up a tankful.
No news is good news, and long may it last.
If nothing much happens, I'm thankful.
A happier cabbage you never did see,
My vegetable spirits are soaring.
If you're after excitement, steer well clear of me.
I want to go on being boring.
I don't go to parties. Well, what are they for,
If you don't need to find a new lover?
You drink and you listen and drink a bit more
And you take the next day to recover.
Someone to stay home with was all my desire
And, now that I've found a safe mooring,
I've just one ambition in life: I aspire
To go on and on being boring.
I have collected a few poems related to gardening in my native language, Dutch. I often think of them!
They shut the road through the woods
Seventy years ago.
Weather and rain have undone it again,
And now you would never know
There was once a road through the woods
Before they planted the trees.
It is underneath the coppice and heath
And the thin anemones.
Only the keeper sees
That, where the ring-dove broods,
And the badgers roll at ease,
There was once a road through the woods.
Yet, if you enter the woods
Of a summer evening late,
When the night-air cools on the trout-ringed pools
Where the otter whistles his mate,
(They fear not men in the woods,
Because they see so few.)
You will hear the beat of a horse's feet,
And the swish of a skirt in the dew,
Steadily cantering through
The misty solitudes,
As though they perfectly knew
The old lost road through the woods ...
But there is no road through the woods.
I love to do the gardening,
I roll on the acanthus,
Do flops across the echinops,
And trash the agapanthus.
Pam Ayres