Garden Muse Day: Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, everyone! I hope that the new year brings you health and happiness.

The beginning of a new year is often greeted with optimism. We hope that this will be the year that world peace is finally achieved. This new year, in particular, we hope that the world economy will improve and that those who have lost jobs recently will find new employment. As individuals, we see this as a chance to begin anew, to quit bad habits and start good ones. We are filled with determination to be better people this year and to achieve our goals. 2009 has just begun; anything is possible!

Today is also Garden Muse Day brought to you the first of each month by Caroyln Gail at Sweet Home and Garden Chicago. I was hoping to find a poem that reflected the wishes for a New Year, something that was profound and might inspire you. In the end, though, I couldn't resist sharing a poem I really like and that only gardeners may appreciate.

Winter Promises

Tomatoes rosy as perfect baby's buttocks,
eggplants glossy as waxed fenders,
purple neon flawless glistening
peppers, pole beans fecund and fast
growing as Jack's Viagra-sped stalk,
big as truck tire zinnias that
mildew will never wilt, roses weighing down,
a bush never touched by black spot,
brave little fruit trees shouldering up
their spotless ornaments of glass fruit:


I lie on the couch under a blanket
of seed catalogs ordering

far too much. Sleet slides down

the windows, a wind edged

with ice knifes through every crack.

Lie to me, sweet garden-mongers:

I want to believe every promise,

to trust in five pound tomatoes

and dahlias brighter than the sun

that was eaten by frost last week.


by Marge Piercy




Happy Gardening in the New Year!

(I'm also going to wish in 2009 that Blogger will be more cooperative in its spacing. After numerous attempts to correct the spacing in the second stanza, I give up!)