A Girl’s Garden

A neighbor of mine in the village
  Likes to tell how one spring
When she was a ******* 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 cornerOf 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,
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 ****.A hill each of potatoes,Tomatoes, beets, beans, pumpkins, corn,
  And even fruit treesAnd 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,
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.