Something else American garden magazines lack...

Hunky British gardeners! Where's the sizzle in garden magazines, anyway? Gardening is such a deliciously dirty and sweaty activity anyway, so come on--let's see some muscles and some curves! Show us your freckles! Peel me a grape! Between the overripe berries, the outdoor showers, the droning of the bees, the wisteria-covered arbor at sunset--are we really going to pretend that gardening is not an inherently lascivious activity?

Actually, in that spirit, I'm going to share a poem I wrote many years ago when I was quite a bit more focused on poetry than I am now:

Embarrassment of Riches

Harvesting asparagus: no job for a man.
You blush at the engorged purple heads that push
through the mulch and grow to a respected ten inches.
I take the shears and slice off twelve for the steamer.

The fastest growing vegetable, asparagus
so common that we eat it as a midnight snack.
“We’re out of recipes,” you laugh, eyes wide
at the latest crop, running out in your bare feet

to pick a lemon for the sauce. “Enough
with the vegetables,” the neighbors groan
endless sacks of ripe tomatoes at their doors,
driving with the windows up for fear someone will

force a zucchini in. Another shipment of seeds.
You and I plant frantic rows, circles, clumps.
There are twenty five flowering vines in the catalog
and we have to choose, fighting tendrils in our sleep

The things you find in your own backyard.
It’s a miracle we met at all, wrapped as we were
in a tangle of peas, blinded by an early show
of fire red sunflowers, six feet tall by March.