I’ve sent my empty pot again/ To beg another slip; The last you gave, I’m grieved to tell /December’s frost did nip.

The whole poem -

Sent with a Flower-Pot Begging a Slip of Geranium
I’ve sent my empty pot again
To beg another slip;
The last you gave, I’m grieved to tell
December’s frost did nip.
I love fair Flora and her train
But nurse her children ill;
I tend too little, or too much;
They die from want of skill.
I blush to trouble you again,
Who’ve served me oft before;
But, should this die, I’ll break the pot,
And trouble you no more.
Christian Milne

Christian Milne led a perfectly normal life for a working class woman of her age except she managed to publish a book of poems that people still read a couple of hundred years later.

https://www.scottishwomenwritersontheweb.net/writers-a-to-z/christian-milne

She was a fine poet !

Perennial geranium- I imagine this is the flower the poem was about -

The best public gardens in town are located across town. For some reason, the extra 10 minutes of driving usually seems too far. I made the trip yesterday . It was so worth it . 100 and some years ago the gardens were a point of pride in one of the really nice ends of town. Then the steel belt manufacturing turned into the rust belt and now Dayton Ohio is just another one of those places that used to be somewhere nice. I'm sure the gardens were designed and installed by a world class landscape architects. There used to be a lot of those around. I'm sure there used to be plenty of money to maintain the park. These days I'm sure it's mostly volunteers. There are some really talented people in the volunteer group. The classic design of the place is pretty durable and that helps. It's easier to put it public garden in a place that's designed to be a public garden. It's impressive the job that the current group of gardeners is doing though. A real sense of rhythm and flow in their design, very well tended. Lots of surprise and discovery. And whoever chooses the colors- Oh my !

At the entrance - a giant bowl of pale peach colored begonias. Brilliant !

I have so many more pictures from here! It will be a week full of flowers here at the Brawl.. That's all I got room for now, though . Thanks for dropping by!