Green Thumb Caught Red-Handed

In the great garden of Madame Roussel

There grew, to her horror, a lingering smell

Somewhat out of keeping with feelings genteel,

Good graces and manners, and painfully real;

There came to her notice the knowledge that she

Was the harborer of a bold monstrosity

Fertilizing her flowers by means quite disgusting,

A potent decoction so grossly encrusting

Her sweet Potentilla and Rosa rugosa,

So gamey its stench went from here to Formosa;

Such a shame that the corpses kept coming unburied,

But this was the farthest that they could be carried;

Madame’s predilection for lilies and roses

Was matched by the murders done under the noses

Of neighbors and garden-fanatics and friends,

Some of whom, by the way, met their untimely ends;

In short, the career, the vocation, the loves

Of the dame with the blood-engorged gardening gloves

Could have gone on forever, and borne her much fruit,

Were it not that weight-lifting was not her long suit,

Nor was thorough disposal or digging deep ditches;

Who knew that her roses held such fertile riches?

Exposure, at last, was inevitable

When the soil in the garden grew just over-full;

Then “pushing up daisies” took on a new meaning

And oxidized bodies with fumes overweening

Began their announcements of odorous presence

In a way that Madame found to be an unpleasance;

It was nice while it lasted, a gardener’s thrill;

But for cheap fertilizer, it was overkill.