My garden is a creeping place
of hidden eyes and stems that sting,
of sticky webs and killer teeth.
One solace is in crop-sized bling.
A basket filled, a colour feast.
Tomatoes, blushing on the vine
and harvested before the cold,
I stew with garlic chives and wine.
It is a fact that garlic plants
will out-smell anything that lurks.
Best put them into every bed,
a natural pesticide that works?
A substitute for all I do
in mashing, spraying – what a bore!
The quiet zoo of little things
that shout beware should be no more.
Selecting seeds I’d saved last year
I scattered some near thyme and beans,
small jet-black capsules quick to shoot
an aromatic crop of greens.
Too soon, in summer’s brutal storms
the chives collapsed, a mat of seaweed’s
tumbled strands, a meal for aphids
out searching for their sulphur needs.
I took one look and vowed to never
grow the pungent flops again.
Oh, what a mess to cut them down!
No bugs, no chives – to that Amen.
But . . . plants with bulbs have extra lives
like cats; they pay us dividends.
On once bare soil, fresh leaves appeared
of garlic chives! We're back as friends.