SHALLOTS.
Have you got shallots?
You said you had not
But I was able to spot
A lot of shallots
Growing down on your plot.
How are your broccoli?
Mine are a lottery
Look at them! You can see
Covered in spots they be.
Broccoli worry I.
Look at all your lovely spuds
All of mine have come up duds
I've mucked and mulched and sweated blood
And still the sickly buggers lurk
Skulking down there in the mud.
Your vines are fine
Unlike mine
Don't like to whine
But I think I'll find
That wizened grapes make wizened wine.
Your cordon-trained plum trees
Are splendidly spread
Along their sun-blessed wall
My drupes droop
And the fruit
If they fruit at all,
Is enjoyed by the wasps
My cauliflower and radish
Have been thoroughly ravaged
By herds of munching molluscs
Your complacent brassica grows
In plump and serried rows.
Mine are tattered and torn
Wind-battered and worn
And quite frankly, bollocks.
Your plants are much tougher
Your plot doesn't suffer
From conventional garden diseases
A gardening guru
And by that, I mean you
Can grow any damn plant that he pleases..
But it's really not fair
That you don't have your share
Of hostile assaults from the air
Your air-raid defences
Like your slug-proof fences
Are meticulously prepared.
While my lettuces succumbed
Each and every bloody one
To those pretty white-winged lepidoptera
With each gentle breeze
There floats down from my trees
An ariel assault of helicoptera.
And so while your fine garden
Responds to your ardent
And lovingly nurturing touch
My gardening scene
Has left me quite green
With envy that festers and lingers....
And while it would seem
That I've mostly turned green
It's not reached
Quite as far
As my fingers..
© nigel hallworth 2021