The speaker’s neighbor likes to remember the spring she asked her father for a plot of ground to farm by herself. He gave her a small, walled-off corner where a shop had stood, joking that it would make an ideal one-girl farm and strengthen her slim arm. Too small to plow, she worked it by hand, hauled manure but hid from passersby, begged seed, and planted everything from radishes to fruit trees. The result was a miscellany—a little of everything, a great deal of none. Now, watching village life, she privately compares it to that garden: just when things look as if they will come in right, she recognizes the old pattern. Her tone is fond and gently self-mocking. The poem creates warm, amused nostalgia for a child’s oversized ambitions and the rueful knowledge that adult projects often turn out much the same.
A Girl's Garden — Summary
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.