Frostiana - a Girl's Garden Songtext

von Randall Thompson

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 has 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 plow;
So she had to work it all by hand,
But she don't mind now.

She wheeled the dung in the wheelbarrowq
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, beats, beans, pumpkins, corn
And even fruit trees

And yes, she has long mistrusted
That a cider apple tree
In bearing there today is hers,
Or atleast 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.