Robert Frost (1874–1963). Mountain Interval. 1920.
20. A Girls Garden
A
Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a girl on the farm, she did
A childlike thing.
To give her a garden plot
To plant and tend and reap herself,
And he said, “Why not?”
He thought of an idle bit
Of walled-off ground where a shop had stood,
And he said, “Just it.”
An ideal one-girl farm,
And give you a chance to put some strength
On your slim-jim arm.”
Her father said, to plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don’t mind now.
Along a stretch of road;
But she always ran away and left
Her not-nice load.
And then she begged the seed.
She says she thinks she planted one
Of all things but weed.
Radishes, lettuce, peas,
Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
And even fruit trees
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there to-day is hers,
Or at least may be.
When all was said and done,
A little bit of everything,
A great deal of none.
How village things go,
Just when it seems to come in right,
She says, “I know!
Oh, never by way of advice!
And she never sins by telling the tale
To the same person twice.