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 plow;

So she had to work it all by hand, 

But she don't mind now.

 

She wheeled the dung in a 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

In bearing there today 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.