Doggerel and Other Invasive Species

It’s been a good week for doggerel here at Casa Tuel. It started out innocently enough. It began as I was digging out buttercups:

The buttercup, a pretty flower
Bright and cheerful in the yard
Once it’s rooted in your garden
Getting rid of it is hard.

Hardly Shakespeare, but it amused me and led to other rhymes:
Morning glory climbs the fences
Choking out the plants you want
You can pull and pull and pull
But get rid of it you cahn’t.

After that I was on a roll:
Blackberries grow arching canes
That will rip you with their thorns
You might think that you have killed them
But next spring, ta-da, reborn.

Dandelions dot the yard
Golden flowers, gossamer spheres
Blowing in the summer breeze
Multiplying every year

Quack grass frolics through the orchard
Sending rootlets underground
I believe there is one plant that’s
Sprouting up the world around

Ivy, once put in on purpose
Chokes the land with vines and leaves
Housing raccoons, eating houses
Sucking life out of the trees

Scotch broom ate the horse’s pasture
Now it’s started on the lawn
Push it back with a bulldozer
And delude yourself it’s gone

Finally, I was practicing the Irving Berlin song "Easter Bonnet" to sing for a gathering of elders, and found myself writing doggerel to that old tune:

Spring is being tardy at starting up the party
I look out my window and it’s raining again
I’m so tired of waiting. The weeds are germinating
But I look out my window and it’s raining again
In the front yard, in my front yard
All the soil is soft mud
that’s up to the knees
of my old dungarees
Oh, I could use some sunshine
To dry out would be so fine

But I look out my window and it’s raining again

You can see how insidious the urge to write doggerel can become. I pass the bug along to you. Go ye forth and write bad rhymes! It’s something to do while you wait for the rain to let up. Cheers.