Seedtime

I’ve just received a catalogue fresh from the seedsman’s store,

A gorgeous book of fruits and flowers and vegetables galore;

They’re red and blue and white and black and yellow, pink and green,

As tempting an array of stuff as I have ever seen.

And I can hardly wait until the winter’s ice and snow

Melts from my well-loved garden plot when I can take my hoe

And rake and spade and work again the mellow soil and brown,

And drop the seeds my seedsman sells when I am come from town.

For in the catalogue I find a hundred things or more

I wish to plant – so many things I cannot name them o’er;

New kinds of shrubs, rare, blooming plants, and mammoth berries sweet,

And vegetables big and fine, “impossible to beat”.

A dozen new varieties of radishes and peas,

Six kinds of lettuce, eight of corn – I want to try all these;

Cucumbers slim, cucumbers fat, – and limas short and tall,

And melons, cabbage, beets and greens I want to try them all.

Tomatoes new, sixteen in all, the biggest ever seen,

The earliest, the fairest, best, I want the whole sixteen!

And peppers, four varieties, and onions white and red,

Asparagus and celery I want of each a bed.

And turnips early, turnips late, potatoes by the score,

And squashes, my! Don’t say a word, a dozen kinds or more.

Of cauliflower, celery and chard I want a lot,

I want to utilize the whole of my fair garden plot.

I herewith thank the seedsman kind for sending me his book.

When all these things are coming on how pretty they will look!

I know, of course, they’ll look as well or better on my land

Than in the wondrous catalogue the artist eye has planned.

The joy of farming is unknown to those who have no patch

In which when comes the break of day to putter and to scratch;

And when the frost has left the ground, amidst the robin’s song,

I’m going to plant my total plot, twelve feet by twenty long.

Jan. 23, ‘07