The Glory of the Garden

A selection of stanzas from Rudyard Kipling's poem, "The Glory of the Garden" for a Sunday morning.

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made
By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,
While better men than we go out and start their working lives
At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.


There's not a pair of legs so thin, there's not a head so thick,
There's not a hand so weak and white, nor yet a heart so sick,
But it can find some needful job that's crying to be done,
For the Glory of the Garden glorifieth every one.

Then seek your job with thankfulness and work till further orders,
If it's only netting strawberries or killing slugs on borders;
And when your back stops aching and your hands begin to harden,
You will find yourself a partner in the Glory of the Garden.

One of my favourites, and it seemed appropriate what with all the digging I did yesterday ( resulting in an aching back). The attack on the slugs begins now, as well.

I visited Kipling's home last year, a National Trust property (Bateman's) in Burwash, Sussex. Beautiful place, beautiful gardens of course, and I bought myself a laminated copy of the poem above. Laminated, so I could mount it on the wall outside as inspiration.

Also during my visit, I picked up a plant (I always seem to come home with at least one plant when I visit a National Trust property), this beautiful euphorbia which is coming along so nicely.

The weather is cooperating this Bank Holiday weekend, for the most part (a bit of rain yesterday during my forking session). Today is cloudy, and there may be spots of rain but so far, so good. So back out there I go! It is my dearest hope to get the potatoes in today but oh my, there is a lot of stuff down there.










That bad boy took me about half an hour to lever out as it was pretty deep. Still, needs must if I hope to have a successful crop of potatoes.

The good news is, the onions are beginning to sprout! Very exciting!

My fork is calling me ...