Maybe it’s my springtime state: revved up from all those winter months spent ogling centerfolds in garden catalogues…all those dormant desires. I’m ready to fulfill my fantasies, and I want every waking moment to be spent in my garden. Vertical. My husband has other ideas.
I’m betting the first garden came with a well-timed, well-rhymed pickup line designed to lure the gardener to leave her hoe, the weeds, the whatever, for whoopee. And while I haven’t read some of these celebrated poets in over 30 years, in rereading them I now see that literary history is chock-full of garden pickup lines. Why else would these carefully crafted pickup lines use such suggestive images, metaphors, and similes so apt for gardeners?
All gardeners toil against time, decay, and death, so it’s no surprise that most of the greatest garden pickup lines mine those themes. That’s why they’re so effective. They exploit the symbols gardeners hold dear. And what better symbol to exploit than worms? Never has an invertebrate been used so often in the service of man’s desire than the worm. And nobody could deliver a compliment to his beloved, while lamenting her lack of interest, like William Shakespeare, in rhyming couplets no less:
“Be not self-will’d for thou are much too fair
To be death’s conquest and make worms thine heir.”
I know I’m on my way to worm food, but that sentiment sounds more convincing in rhyming couplets. As if that wasn’t enough, Shakespeare goes on to seal the deal with this irresistible offer—you’ll be immortalized in my verse: “So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see, So long live this, and this gives life to thee.” Of course, the offer is good only if you leave the garden—now. There’s always a catch.
These poets weren’t without guile. There was singing; there was flattery; it’s all really foreplay. Just think of the willpower a seventeenth-century gardener needed when faced with Robert Herrick’s alliterative-packed lines. This singing foreplay is designed to soften her up; sure to make a gardener gaga, or at least weak in the knees. He wasn’t called a Cavalier poet for nothing.
“I sing of brooks, of blossoms, birds and bowers,
Of April, May, of June, and July flowers.”
“Hang on to your knickers,” as my grandmother used to say. It’s so considerate of Herrick to break into song before his proposition. He gives the gardener a chance to put her scythe down just before the Grim Reaper carries her off.
But it always comes back to the worm. Here’s Andrew Marvel’s blunt prediction of their collective fate if his beloved holds out much longer.
“ . . . then worms shall try that long-preserved virginity,
And your quaint honor turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust; . . .”
Translation: Get it on with me before it’s too late. You sort of feel “time’s winged chariot drawing near …” This may fall under the category of sympathy sex, which I see has been around a long time. Since they’re both dying, it’s sympathy sex all the way around.
Then there’s flattery. And nobody tops flattery like Bobby Burns’ celebrated simile:
“O my luve’s like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June; . . .”
This is quite a compliment, since we lasses were always competing with the drink. In other words: I’ve ‘ad me pint; I’ve ‘ad me haggis; and now I’ll ‘ave you. That’s spring in Scotland.
Well, there you have it. These bards of the bloomers were all besotted. And they disarmed gardeners as they thumbed their rhyming couplets at time and death, and decay. But it’s not as if we need a reminder that things around us are dying. We’re nothing if not vigilant in our efforts to rescue the living from the dead. That’s why I’m working in the garden today.
You’d think any husband who knows his literary history would be intimidated by the creativity of these bards. Then again, he might just deliver this direct, rather lame line: “You’ve been vertical all day, wanna get horizontal?” While I’d prefer a little singing, followed by a worm-infused rhyming couplets or two, this will do. In the end, I have to agree with Mr. Marvell: “Had we but world enough and time, this coyness …were no crime.”