As autumn occurs in the yard,
The gaertner recurs as a bard.
This one is on YOU -
Ain't mine to renew!
Once more we must view the absard.

A love-smitten gaertner named Schreber
Made a wonderful heap for his neighbor.
But when she loved him not
He cried out, "Let it rot!"
And abandoned his steamy love's labor.

But the neighbor won out all the same,
being a very resourceful young dame.
Although Schreber was gone,
the pile cooked on and on,
and she had compost to use in her name.

Claire

Lovesick Schreber went home to Westphalia
With his gardening paraphernalia.
He tended his pile
In the Teutonic style
Wearing full RheinlandKompost regalia.

Marvelous stuff. Please keep them coming.

I looked up "Limerick" in my dictionary. According to it, we are expounders of: 1) a nonsense poem of five anapestic lines, now often bawdy, usually with the rhyme scheme aabba, the first, second and fifth lines having three stresses, the third and fourth, two: the form was popularized by Edward Lear (Example: There was a young lady named Harris, / Whom nothing could ever embarrass / Till the bath salts one day / In the tub where she lay / Turned out to be plaster of Paris).
Seems to fit this group! (Most must be plastered).
hortster

Poor Schreber was then sent away
from his homeland the very next May.
The local forum police
claimed "disturbing the peace"
but absurdity will still have its day.

Claire

So now I'm the one being blamed?
Though I do feel somewhat ashamed,
the fault's not all mine,
I have partners in crime--
it's abundantly clear I've been framed.

A gardener who hailed from Piraeus
Had a heap that would shock and dismay us.
He filled it with gristle
And odd bits of thistle
And species unknown to Linnaeus.

Don Quixote rode to Abyssinia,
To find the world's finest red zinnia.
He fed it (of course)
With manure from his horse,
To win favor from lovely Dulcinea.

Make that, "A grizzled old Greek from Piraeus ...."

A three legged dog and a snake
Chased a mouse round a heap by the lake
Napping nearby
The gardener said "Why,
I'll whack ye with this bloody rake!"

This weekend had no time for play
I turned all three piles in one day.
Giving poetry a crack
does no good for my back.
Ibuprofen now take me away!

My new next door neighbor's a wench
who complains that my pile has a stench.
I'll show this loud phobic
a real smell--anaerobic
by giving the pile a good good drench!

That cantankerous neighboring wench
Must not know that you're truly a Mensch.
When the odor wafts closer
She'll just get verboser
As your pile's thirst you labor to quench.

My heap's almost done for the season,
So I'm writing this rhyme for a reason.
I'll soon take my shovel
From my gardening hovel
And turn all my lettuce and peas in.

What about haiku? 5-7-5

Some are chemophobes
Others, happy poisoners
But gardeners all.

There once was a gardener named Bright
Whose neutrinos grew faster than light.
She planted one day
In the usual way
What she'd reaped on the previous night!

For gardeners who favor haiku
There's a composting thread just for you.
Though these metrical manias
Can be spontaneous
You can use them to scoop up what's gnu.

A venerable Wizard from Oz,
hid his compost with curtains of gauze.
Along came Dorothy and new pals,
who doubted his credentials,
then tore off the gauze just because.

I'm attending a long deposition.
My mind has come to the decision
that these lawyers' best use
would be as refuse
to speed my pile's decomposition.

My soil's a bit nitrogen-weak.
So I developed a modern technique
to convert scraps like gruel
into high-nitro fuel.
Her name's Daisy--she lays five eggs a week!

ny, short on browns, got so cranky,
he considered composting his hankies.
Schreber said "better keep them,
you'll probably need them
when my Angels keep beating your Yankees!"

(I shouldn't talk--at least you made the playoffs)

I 'posted some foliage of Quercus,
And my neighbor said I was a jerkus.
Said he, "What a waste.
That stuff isn't chaste."
He's a clown that belongs in the circus.

I showed that clown up much, much later
When I tilled mucho 'post 'round my 'maters.
They grew so darned dense
They knocked over his fence.
Revenge feels so good on a hater.

He said, "I'll sue for all you are worth!"
I said, "'Post gave my plants too much girth."
So he tried it in court,
But the judge was a sport.
"Act of nature, as sure as my birth!"

In Oz there's a magical toad
Who deposits a golden, square load.
In just a short while
You can build a fine pile:
Just follow the yellow brick road.

On the diamond, the Yanks may be choking,
But their clubhouse has truly been smoking.
Those composted buns
Have been real home runs
With no pitching -- just turning and poking.

In front of two hunters, an abyss
The bottom of which was a guess.
So they threw in a stump
From a pile, for the thump.
And soon things would be quite a mess.

They jumped when a rustle they heard
O'er the pile a goat came like a bird
And ran between fast
Like revving on gas
Then jumped in the hole (quite absurd).

Quite puzzled, they both would say, "Why?"
By the pile, soon a farmer came by.
"Seen my new goat?
He's gray of the coat."
"He jumped in that hole!" they replied.

Farmer Jim-Bob then froze like a bump.
"You hunters must think I'm a chump."
Said he, "Cannot be,
Pile's brush from a tree
And I had the goat chained to a stump."

A gardener who was not very bright
tried composting live dynamite.
If it's green or it's brown
doesn't matter much now.
For he's taken his craft to new heights.

I don't understand the hysteria
over cantaloupe rife with listeria.
I'll just put the rind
(all I can find)
in the pile with more greens like wisteria.

(I don't mean to make light--I know many people have died. I just couldn't get the rhymes out of my head)

A fellow whose soil couldn't cope
Wooed his neighbor, a gardener, with hope.
He cried, "Honeydew!"
But she said, "Not with you!
You don't compost, so I cantaloupe."

Bravo!

Eleven fine limericks on compost
Were inscribed on Saigon's tallest lamppost.
"The ground all around it
Quickly abounded
With blooms," said the staid Vietnam Post.

The bermuda is so supersized,
my garden now gets criticized.
So it's time to get drastic
I'll lay down the plastic.
In 3 months it'll be solarized!

Yesterday in our local co-op tent
someone asked what the name on my plot meant.
It's from when I was startin'
with my Schrebergarten
(or what Flora would call an "allotment").

For more limerick posts Schreber is yearning,
so he keeps adding new material and turning.
But the response is not there
and the cupboard is bare.
The literary fire is not burning.

Claire

There once was a farmer named Lyman
Who wooed a young maid with his rhymen
In the garden one day
On some hay she did lay
And said "compost's all turnin and timin"

It's been over two years without rhyme.
What have you all done with the time?
If you've kept your piles hot
You must have quite a lot
Of black gold that will treat your plants fine!

Okay, I'll bite.
It's not a limeric, but it rhymes

Ode to Zucchini (In West Virginia)

I think that I shall never see
A thing so lovely as zucchini
Growing there in hills so round
Leafing out across the ground

First come the flowers, yellow and bright
They open by day, they close at night
We wait and wait, the fruitâÂÂs almost ready,
First one, then two, then fifteen, then twenty!

WeâÂÂll chop them up, tender and sweet,
And sauté them with squirrel meat
WeâÂÂll grate them and bake them and make chocolate chip zucchini bars,
And then weâÂÂll sneak the extras into unsuspecting neighborsâ cars

WeâÂÂll go to the beach to have some fun
When we get back theyâÂÂll be gargantuan
So into the compost theyâÂÂll be dropped
To feed the soil for next yearâÂÂs crops.

While compostâÂÂs a topic so staid,
One might think that few words would be played.
But this thread is a hoot
And we just canâÂÂt say mute
âÂÂCause limericks donâÂÂt biodegrade.

Zucchini can grow like the dickens.
It lengthens, but worse yet, it thickens.
If the humans won't eat it,
you're still not defeated.
It's a marvelous treat for the chickens.

To make my "compostables" list,
I asked annpat what should surely be dissed.
Says I, "What about bread?"
"An abomination!" she said.
Pepperidge Farm will now be sorely missed.