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Wikipedia article
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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 plough;
So she had to work it all by hand,
- But she don’t mind now.
She wheeled the dung in the 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 tree
In bearing there to-day 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.
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