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Hi there all and everyone,

Other places on our forum we have posted garden writing - so to start a nice and specific thread I thought I would post the first one on this topic.

I hope you will find your own favourites, saying, poems, proverbs and short writing, and that you will post them for us all to enjoy. We are not really here to discuss them - that will be for another site. We (or definitely me) want to read good writing and then imagine.

Keep it happy, informative and please leave out life metaphors not fit for those of us still under 21. That's me don't you know! Smile now.

Thanks and all and all.
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Herb Garden
by Timothy Steele (b 1948)

"And these, small, unobserved . . . " — Janet Lewis

The lizard, an exemplar of the small,
Spreads fine, adhesive digits to perform
Vertical push-ups on a sunny wall;
Bees grapple spikes of lavender, or swarm
The dill's gold umbels and low clumps of thyme.
Bored with its trellis, a resourceful rose
Has found a nearby cedar tree to climb
And to festoon with floral furbelows.

Though the great, heat-stunned sunflower looks half-dead
The way it, shepherd's crook-like, hangs its head,
The herbs maintain their modest self-command:
Their fragrances and colours warmly mix
While, quarrying between the pathway’s bricks,
Ants build minute volcanoes out of sand.

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What herbs are you growing at the moment?

Cheers now

A Haiku for you -

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One Flower
by Jack Kerouac (1922-1969)

One flower
on the cliffside
Nodding at the canyon
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Cheers now,

Hi there people who garden and like poetry! Is that you?

Here is one for the slow-in-coming spring for many.
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Springtime

by Velma D. Bates

Oh, spring came to my garden
And caught it unaware
Wearing just a few old leaves
And a dejected air.

But when spring left my garden,
Its work so deftly done,
Many, many Daffodils
Were dancing in the sun.

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Cheers now

Hello everyone - and here is a poem for the fairies!

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The Flowers
by Robert Louis Stevenson

All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener’s garters, Shepherd’s purse,
Bachelor’s buttons, Lady’s smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.

Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames—
These must all be fairy names!

Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!

Fair are grown-up people’s trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all.

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Cheers now

Hi there,

Columbines

by Teresa Hooley 1888 - 1973

Airily poised in the garden bed,
Delicate saffron, white and rose,
With gossamer petals lightly spread
The columbines flutter upon their toes.

Wait, till the moonlight sets them free!
They'll stir, they'll shake off the dew, they'll go
Dancing, dancing (but you'll not see--
You'll be too busy asleep to know).

Someone surprised them once in May,
Glimmering ivory, gold, and pink,
Dancing under the moon. That way
Columbines found their name, I think

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Cheers for today and tomorrow too!

Hello all,

I've heard it said that it s simple folk who like easy rhyming poetry - so I guess that makes me simple as I have always like Walter de la Mare.
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from Peacock Pie

“A poor old Widow in her weeds
Sowed her garden with wild-flower seeds;
Not too shallow, and not too deep,
And down came April -- drip -- drip -- drip.
Up shone May, like gold, and soon
Green as an arbour grew leafy June.
And now all summer she sits and sews
Where willow herb, comfrey, bugloss blows,
Teasle and pansy, meadowsweet,
Campion, toadflax, and rough hawksbit;
Brown bee orchis, and Peals of Bells;
Clover, burnet, and thyme she smells;
Like Oberon's meadows her garden is
Drowsy from dawn to dusk with bees.
Weeps she never, but sometimes sighs,
And peeps at her garden with bright brown eyes;
And all she has is all she needs --
A poor Old Widow in her weeds.”

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Cheers

Here is another one I like - what do you say?

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Outside in my Dressing Gown

by Liz Cowley

I’m outside in my dressing gown –

I often am at half past seven,

when plants are sometimes waking up.

To me, that is a 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 any more.



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 the day.

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Cheers now

Hi there one and all,

Here is another poem about the spring season - so here is to the change ... lovely stuff happens in spring not so?

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Spring Garden
by Gareth Lancaster

Jack Frost has upped and gone away,
To his icy summer home.
He stays there whilst the sun is warm,
It's not safe for him to roam.

Now he's left the earth warms up,
And flowers start to grow.
Peeking through the heating soil,
Growing quickly for a show.

Crocuses and Daffodils,
Green shoots poke through the ground.
And with each day as spring returns,
They burst up all around.

When spring arrives the garden glows,
With yellows, blues and reds.
Stretching in the sunny warmth,
Whilst Jack is safe in bed!

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Still, we all know that Jack Frost is patient and knows that his time will come again.

Cheers now

Hello Gardeners,

This is by a young lady still in junior school. I am not sure why she called it Tommy. Perhaps Tommy is her brother?

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Tommy
by Gwendolyn Brooks

I put my seed into the ground
And said, "I'll watch it grow."
I watered it and cared for it
As well as I could know.

One day I walked in my back yard,
And oh! what did I see?
My seed had popped itself right out
Without consulting me.

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I say she will make a smart gardener.

Cheers now

Hi there,

Can't you just taste these words? Hmmm.

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From Blossoms
by Li-Young Lee (b 1957)

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

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I could! Cheers now