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with real toads

robin

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To introduce  one of the denizens of the allotment. This little fellow’s favourite perch is the handle of a spade, from where he watches proceedings on the ground with interest. Last summer I was amazed when he landed lightly on a rhubarb leaf right next to me (I was using the spade), and stayed there for about 30 seconds, while I was weeding the rhubarb patch. I wouldn’t have thought the leaf could hold the robin’s weight, nor that the robin could retain its balance on the leaf as it gently swayed and bobbed in the wind. I was wrong on both counts, of course. In the absence of a photo of this fleeting yet memorable moment, I humbly offer this poem: Allotment poem   by Earthscraper   you land so lightly, robin on the rhubarb leaf afloat on the breeze   the leaf rising and falling like a magic carpet green on its ruddy stalk   where better to survey the soil turned by the spade for bugs and beetles?   if only my poem, landing on the page, could be so balance...
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urban parks - visions manifested

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The terraced house where I live only has a small courtyard garden, but I am lucky to live next to a wonderful urban park - itself a kind of garden, albeit a public rather than a private one. What amazes me about Bedford Park (in the town of Bedford, that is, not the Bedford Park in London) is that the Victorian gardeners who designed it in the 1880s could never see what I see 130 years later. The magnificent pines and firs were barely half the size of a person when put in the ground - now look at them!  Except that they did see what I see - with the eye of imagination. Not only did they envision it, but they intended it and put those intentions into action. Their vision was materialized, even if it took over a century to manifest and fully come to pass as the trees reach maturity. Long after the brief span of their own lives was over. Not for them to receive the benefit of their visionary work, but for generations yet to come.  Baron & Sons of Derby were contracted by the...
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with real toads

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    “Imaginary gardens with real toads in them”. That’s what the American modernist poet Marianne Moore thought poems should be. With this memorable phrase she suggests that poems should always contain something real. The abstract elements and imaginary constructs should be balanced out by genuine things – ‘real toads’, so to speak.   I like the metaphor of the poem as a garden, even though Moore intimates we should go beyond mere metaphor. It reminds me of my allotment, which has small ponds inhabited by toads, amongst other things. My role as occasional gardener there is to provide enough nourishment in the form of green leaves to feed the giant slugs, on which the toads can gorge. the allotment on summer - a field of dreams The allotment is full of real things like earthworms, compost heaps, mice, sheds, spades, robins, aphids, tenacious weeds, bits of string, and so on. And real actions with real consequences too. The sowing of seeds puts you in touch with the creativ...
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