Outside in My Dressing Gown: Poems for Garden Lovers

By Liz Cowley

What is more enjoyable first thing in the morning than slipping out to the garden in your dressing gown? Liz Cowley shares this and many other delightful moments as she takes us on a humorous journey through the gardener's year. Laugh through the seasons with Liz's poems, filled with acute observations and bitter-sweet wit. Here is everything from the joy of a first crocus and the frustration of a floppy hyacinth to drought and soaring dragonflies, or wrestling with weevils and being kept awake by the nightmare sound of mating foxes. Written in many different styles from classic to modern, Liz's writing is a voice for all gardeners, even those who would not normally reach for verse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gibson Square
• Release date: Jun 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781783340804

Liz Cowley

After many years as an advertising copywriter, Liz Cowley's first book of 'approachable poetry' A Red Dress, was described by Joanna Lumley as 'witty, poignant and straight from the heart', and was turned into a popular stage show in London and Dublin. She then made a name for herself with amusing volumes about gardening, like Outside in my dressing gown and Gardening in slippers, earning the accolade by The Lady magazine as 'Britain's finest gardening poet'.

Book preview

SPRING

Season of hope, rebirth, new happiness

Illustration

.

Where have you been hiding for so long?

So long coming –

a friend who doesn’t call

or see you for months

until you despair.

I look out in the garden

remembering your company last year,

bringing me bunches of snowdrops,

crocus and jaunty, laughing daffodils.

You always come too late

and leave too early.

Why can’t you arrive when I want you to?

Why do you always keep me waiting?

Spring –

where are you?

Where have you been hiding for so long?

.

Here at last

Season of hope, rebirth, new happiness,

with daffodils and snowdrops once again,

and gone at last, that wintry wilderness,

and mourning plants you’ve lost to frost and rain.

Season of fresh hope and new ambition,

with dreams of what to plant and what to do,

while picturing a gradual transition

as spring arrives and skies return to blue.

You step outside, you wander round the lawn,

your spirits lift, your garden is reborn.

Quite suddenly it soars – your disposition!

With buds now opening up before your eyes,

you feel a surge within your mental state

and do not trouble friends with winter sighs

or look within yourself and curse your fate.

Instead, you dream and plan what you’ll be growing

in weeks to come now all the frost is gone,

and all the seeds you’ll very soon be sowing –

at last empowered to smile, and carry on.

So long in coming, spring is here at last,

and even though the sky is overcast

the first new signs of life, at last, are showing.

.

A new spring in your step

One primrose, the first aconite,

one celandine, a single crocus –

one bloom can thrill, restore your will,

and bring a whole new sense of focus.

.

Wildly out of place

There’s nothing that special about a wild garlic,

except the wild garlic once given to me.

A dear friend once dug it from some Sussex thicket,

it’s now in my border, an odd place to be.

But there it keeps growing and sprouting each

springtime – and there it keeps spreading –

and year after year.

My friend is no longer. The garlic grows stronger,

and always reminds me of when he was here.

.

Butterfly

I am called a butterfly,

and very often wonder why

I wasn’t called a ‘flutter by’,

describing how I pass you by.

In fact, each time I flutter by

I think the name of butterfly

was some unfortunate mistake –

it’s such an easy one to make.

I dip and bob and flit a bit,

and dance and prance when in the air.

I should be called a ‘flutter by’

describing how I’m flying there.

.

A flop

A hyacinth is great until

it’s somehow gone and lost the will

to stay bolt upright in its pot,

and fades a shade and sags a lot.

You prop it up, and then despair

to see it wilting, tilting there.

It’s sad to have to throw it out,

but who wants floppy plants about?

You stake it, do what you are able,

but still it droops upon the table,

as if it’s somehow plunged in gloom

despite the fact it’s still in bloom.

Too soon, before the flowers have died,

I give up, put the pot outside.

For me, it’s not an indoor plant.

Put up with sagging blooms? I can’t.

.

Gone

Where on earth are you?

Twenty years together,

and you fell out of my life,

just like that.

One day, you were there,

and the next you disappeared.

How could you?

You were my constant companion.

However hard things grew

you were always there for me –

sturdy, strong, solid,

easy to work with,

easy to be with.

And now you’re in hiding.

I was a fool to lose you.

You fell out of my life suddenly,

leaving a gaping hole.

I have a replacement now,

but it’s not the same.

I miss your strength,

your steeliness,

the touch and feel of you.

Where are you –

my favourite trowel?

.

Wallflowers

Wallflowers, in the wild such loners

who don’t like company at all.

Colourful, but solitary,

content alone upon a wall.

Wallflowers, girls not asked to dance

and not content against the wall.

Unhappy, so unlike the flowers

who don’t like any friends at all.

.

A giant mistake

A narrow door, a giant bamboo –

there’s no way