May Day!

My, oh my... the first of May...
Well, I've gotten about one-fifth of those danged artichokes dug up and tossed (literally) out of the garden. Good grief! The black flies are swarming, but it's been cooler with a beautiful rain the past two evenings... just perfect because we transplanted garlic, top onions, catnip, and so on. Mom gave me several hours help again, and the main garden is weeded, cultivated and raked off. The back berry garden is weeded and hoed, as is the Strawberry Patch. As a matter of fact, I finally got around to planting lettuces and spinach, and spread compost atop the asparagus patch and all the transplants, so things look good! At least I feel like maybe we've gotten the upper hand thus far in the gardens... for the time-being. The rain has given a jolt to everything... flowers are blooming, trees are slowly beginning to leaf out. Thus, I will share a poem from one of my most-loved old-fashioned poets, James Whitcomb Riley. This is taken from Riley Farm Rhymes, a book of farm-related prose published in 1901 that mom gave me some years ago...

When The Green Gits Back In The Trees
In spring, when the green gits back in the trees,
And the sun comes out and stays,
And yer boots pulls on with a good tight squeeze,
And you think of yer bare-foot days;
When you ort to work and you want to not,
And you and yer wife agrees

It's time to spade up the garden-lot,
When the green gits back in the trees
Well! work is the least o' my idees
When the green, you know, gits back in the trees!

When the green gits back in the trees, and bees
Is a-buzzin' aroun' ag'in
In that kind of a lazy go-as-you-please
Old gait they bum roun' in;
When the groun's all bald whare the hay-rick stood,
And the crick's riz, and the breeze
Coaxes the bloom in the old dogwood,
And green gits back in the trees,-
I like, as I say, in sich scenes as these,
The time when the green gits back in the trees!

When the whole tail-fethers o' Wintertime
Is all pulled out and gone!
And the sap it thaws and begins to climb,
And the swet it starts out on
A feller's forred, a-gittin' down
At the old spring on his knees-
I kindo' like jest a-loaferin' roun'
When the green gits back in the trees-
Jest a-potterin' roun' as I- durn- please-

When the green, you know, gits back in the trees!