What the song is about
On a sunny summer morning, a group of people take their tools and go out to work in their little garden. They water the flowers, enjoy the roses, pull out weeds and pick ripe tomatoes and green cucumbers. At the end, their basket is full. The song celebrates the whole journey from tiny seeds to tasty food and how good it feels to work outdoors.
Useful words and expressions
- garden work: jobs you do in a garden
- tools: things you work with, like a spade or a rake
- to be someone's pride: something you are very proud of (This little garden is our pride.)
- to bloom: when flowers open
- scent: a pleasant smell
- gloom: a sad, dark feeling. Takes away the gloom means "makes you feel happier."
- weeds: plants that grow where you don't want them
- soil: the earth that plants grow in
- toil: hard work. It usually sounds tiring and negative, so happy, healthy toil is a poetic, playful way of saying the work is enjoyable.
- ripe: ready to eat (fruit and vegetables)
- to pick: to take fruit or vegetables from the plant
- one by one: one after the other
- harvest / crop: what you collect from your garden or field
- to fill something to the top: to make it completely full
Grammar
- Present simple for actions and facts: We take our tools, They need to drink, The roses start to bloom.
- Phrasal verbs: go outside, pull out (the weeds), take away (the gloom).
- Verb + to + infinitive: start to bloom, need to drink, have some work to do.
- Superlative + present perfect: The finest vegetables we've seen (= the best vegetables we have ever seen).
- Adjective + to + infinitive: great to eat.
- -ing form as a subject: Working in nature feels so good.
Careful: song language
Some lines are shaped by rhyme and rhythm. Don't copy them in everyday English:
- We give some water to the flowers: in normal speech we simply say We water the flowers.
- in summer hours: a poetic phrase that rhymes with flowers. Usually we say in summer or on summer days.
- We pull the weeds out from the soil: more natural is We pull the weeds out of the soil.
- We find the cucumbers so green: here find is used loosely to fit the rhyme with seen. Normally you'd say The cucumbers are so green or We find some nice green cucumbers.
- Our little harvest is so fun: so fun is informal. In careful English, say is so much fun.