Monday Muse

I am slowly reading my way through the vintage gardening book, Gardening on Nothing A Year, by Mary S. Griffith. Each chapter begins with a poem and peppered throughout the book are these very sweet little sketches.

The poem that precedes Chapter IX is today's Monday Muse...

A Perfect Lady

I knew a girl who was so pure
She couldn't say the word Manure.
Indeed her modesty was such
She wouldn't pass a rabbit hutch;
And butterflies upon the wing
Would make her blush like anything.

The lady is a gardener now,
And all her views have changed somehow;
She squashes greenfly with her thumb,
And knows how little snowdrops come;
In fact the garden she has got,
Has broadened out her mind a lot.
--Reginald Arkell

Of course, this is not a practical look for any gardener, but I think it makes a cute accompanyment for the poem! Oh, to be sooo stylish in the garden -- though the heels would surely be hazardous!

In reality, I wake up very chipper, which is fortunate because I hit the ground running...let the dogs out, make the coffee, run outside to let the geese out before they wake the neighborhood, come back inside, feed the dogs, feed the cats, THEN I get to pour a cup and perhaps drink it before it gets cold -- sigh! THEN, it's out to the garden to give it a morning drink...dressed in whatever happened to be handy enough to throw on!