…this is 100% certifiable fiction…
so wrapped up in gardening
but it’s grabbed my heart
what’s a country boy to do
I just can’t escape the soil
my wife’s stopped vining
gardening’s got her heart too
brought her down to earth
she’s learned to leaf me alone
her tied up with tending ours
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rob kistner © 2021
Poetry at: The Sunday Muse
Poetry Pantry at: Poets & Storytellers
Poetry Inspired by Ecological Change: Earthweal
…inch by inch, row by row, John sings he’s gonna “grow his own”…
…John’s wife now helps tend their inch by inch, row by row…
I love it. I remember when my garden claimed me completely. I now tend a couple of potted blooms, lol, much easier but not as satisfying.
Glad you enjoyed this Sherry. My muse was apparently being ‘clever’ today. As a distraction from his marketing consulting business, my son plants, grows, and harvests a half acre vegetable garden every year. It’s always a wonderful “garden-to-table” spring, summer, and autumn here — yummm! 🙂
Love the direction you strolled!
Helen — this took root in my brain, and grew — I couldn’t get it out… 🙂
One canknot garden and not get in the soil some. Love this Rob!!
Nope! It’s in the game Carrie… 🙂
Ah, she’s a woman after my own heart! Weeds are my sworn enemy and my plants are tended like babies all summer long!
I was never patient enough Shay, but my son Justin plants and tends a wonderful 1/2 acre vegetable garden every year — my grateful contribution is to help eat the results! 🙂
I love that last line. Esp as none of us can escape the soil! — “ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”
Thank you!No we cant qbit! Least no one has yet!
Luv where your muse took you. Happy Sunday
Much love…
Thank you Gillena! Much love to you my friend! 🙂
Love the poem and the John Denver clip. It sent me straight back to my parent’s house and their tiny garden plot. We teased them so much about the miniature harvest of potatoes…but it’s still a good memory.
Bravo to your parents Chrissa! 😉
There is nothing more relaxing than working in the garden and getting soil under the fingernails – my plans don’t sing back to me though!
Sorry -that should read my plants don’t sing back to me!
No prob 😉
You are buying your seeds at the wrong store Marion. My son gets his mail order from Merlin’d Seeds & Soils… 😉
Fun wordplay, Rob. Your son has the right idea. Home grown food is getting back to the garden 🙂
Thank you Lisa…
“We are stardust
We are golden
We are million year old carbon
And we’ve got to get ourselves
Back to the garden” …Joni
This made me smile a much needed smile. I am a woman who does love a garden.
I love a garden, just not as good at it as my body has betrayed in recent years, My son is brilliant at it!
Hurray for Justin for keeping you in garden goodies. Love the use of knot and leaf, you clever devil you!!
Yes, a heartfelt hip-hip, hip-hip, hip-hip hurray for my son Justin -— he is a helluva man! He has provided me with a wonderful place to finally rest, before my final resting place. All three of my children, Jennifer, Aaron, and Justin, have been each, such a blessing in my life — which I am genuinely not certain a wild-hearted, willful, cantankerous, hard-headed, SOB like me ever deserved. But I have loved each deeply and gratefully, and as best I could! I miss Aaron fiercely, still. My Jennifer snd my Justin are both as stubborn as I am, each much smarter and more successful than I — and Justin has proven to be my special guardian angel. I may not have much money, but I am a wealthy man!
My mother took charge of the garden, Dad helped her with the heavy stuff and the plowing with the tractor bit. We had a big one, at least half acre and then another acre in potatoes and melons. Dad took care of the latter.
When they married, Grandpa, owner of their share cropped farm, told them that Mom was to be in charge of the house and garden things and Dad would take care of the barn and other needed things, Grandpa “managed” it all though.
I had not heard the Garden Song sung by John Denver, not even at a concerto of his that we attended. I love the animation of the accompanying video.
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Glad you enjoyed this Jim. Thst farm of yours sounds like quite a production. 🙂
I’m double dipping tonight, I posted one that was too late another time.
The farm was 120 acres but the gardening, the corals, and the farmstead took another five or so. The new owner plowed it all up, knocked down all the buildings, even the old house where I was born, except those that would hold equipment. That new family lives in the nearby town.
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Nice piece of property Jim. My wife’s family own’s 3 large farms in the north eastern part of Ohio. One is a dairy farm, one is for cattle and pigs, the third is a horse farm. I do not have the temperament to handle responsibility of that magnitude, too impatient. But I have great respect for the level of commitment and endurance exhibited by the small American farmer and rancher. They are constantly being pushed out by the big corporate farms. Their plight is not easy.
This is lovely. And the puns are nice. It’s quite daring, I think, using them because it can be distracting. So well done! A sweet poem. I am not a good gardener but I feel so strongly that it is a wholesome and life giving activity that my lack of interest disappoints me.
Thank you very much! :). Being steward of s plot of land, small or large, is not easy. I personally couldn’t do it.
Delightful!
And I always enjoy hearing John Denver.
But as for me, I like gardens, but not gardening.
Thank you Rosemary, and I hear you. I do note the patience to garden.
A fun and lighthearted write. Any poem about gardening (undertaken by me at least) would be pure fiction also!
Thsnk you Ingrid. It’s what came. My muse was lazy this weekend… 🙂