Robert Frost

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.