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Allotment Poem

Quiet please! Kindly don’t impede my concentration

I am sitting on my allotment thinking thoughts of propagation

Of sowing and of nurturing the fruits my work will bear

And the place won’t know what’s hit it

Once I get up from my chair.

I’m at the planning stages now, if you should need to ask

And if I’m looking weary, it’s the rigours of the task

While the creation of a plot is a strain, as you can guess

So if my eyes should close, it isn’t sleep of course, it’s stress.

Oh, the mower I will cherish, and the tools I will oil

The dark, nutritious compost I will stroke into the soil

My sacrifice, devotion and heroic aftercare

Will leave you green with envy

Once I get up from my chair.

I’ve got lots of leeks to dibble and my runner beans to stake

And I want everything hung up – the garden hoe, the garden rake

I’ll disinfect the greenhouse, when I’ve finished in the shed

Then, beside my faded roses, I will snip off every head.

I will excavate the bindweed, treat the moss upon the lawn

That hairy bittercress will curse the day that it was born

I will rise against the foe, and in the fight we will be matched

And the cabbage caterpillars they will curse the day they hatched.

Oh the branches I will layer and the cuttings I will take

Let other fellows dig a pond, I shall dig a LAKE

My allotment – what a showpiece!

There’ll be neighbours come to stare

And I’ll bow and take the credit

Once I get up from my chair.

Pam Ayres (from Ayres on the Air)