Poetry by Clare Best

June and July are probably the busiest months in the market garden. Activity (both plant and human) is intense! The garden becomes its own world, enclosed by lush hedges. It's a world crowded with colour, texture and scent as all the different herbs, vegetables and fruit grow and ripen for cutting, pulling, picking.

In the market garden
(for alan)

June, and your vision cramped
by cow parsley, buttercup, hawthorn
each plot of turned earth

greened again in hours.
Today you tie canes into wigwams
for five thousand runner beans,

strim poppies around currant bushes,
pull weeds from tarnished artichokes.
Tonight you'll cut asparagus,

tomorrow rhubarb, lettuce, chard.
You pause to clean the spade you bought
for sixteen pounds twelve and six

(week after week you sharp its blade
with an angle-grinder, file the burr,
test the edge on your thumb.)

You'll see further in October
when leaves spin and scatter from hedgerows,
when growth stays underground.