A Girl's Garden, by Robert Frost

A Girl's Garden

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.

poems.one - Robert Frost

Robert Frost