Hosta 'Abba Dabba Do' - 23 September 2025

 

October - Robert Frost

O hushed October morning mild,

Thy leaves have ripened to the fall;

To-morrow’s wind, if it be wild,

Should waste them all.

The crows above the forest call;

To-morrow they may form and go.

O hushed October morning mild,

Begin the hours of this day slow,

Make the day seem to us less brief.

Hearts not averse to being beguiled,

Beguile us in the way you know;

Release one leaf at break of day;

At noon release another leaf;

One from our trees, one far away;

Retard the sun with gentle mist;

Enchant the land with amethyst.

Slow, slow!

For the grapes’ sake, if they were all,

Whose leaves already are burnt with frost,

Whose clustered fruit must else be lost—

For the grapes’ sake along the wall.

In 1962 I was studying at an American university in Mexico City called Mexico City College. Looking back I realize I was a complete idiot and that I did not understand the wonderful education I was getting all paid by the hard-earned money of my mother.

I had a a literature professor, who even in my ignorance, I knew looked like poet Robert Frost who was to die in 1963. It seems that my professor was a good friend of Frost’s and told us all kind of stories which I thought were boring from my desk on the opposite end of the blackboard.

At the very least I have since then developed an interest in poetry with the likes of Jorge Luís Borges, Emily Dickinson, William Carlos Williams and here in Vancouver I talk once a week with George Bowering (the first Canadian Poet Laureate) and with George McWhirter (the first Vancouver Poet Laureate).

It seems that every autumn I look at leaves and in this case the leaves of my hostas and I invariably think of Robert Frost. It could be the connection of his name with the coming frosts.

This blog I am inserting in the hole I left yesterday as I did not write one. This is why the scan of the hosta is today.

Tony Avent

 Hosta 'Elvis Lives'

This particular hosta’s claim to fame is that it is Hosta ‘Abba Dabba Do’, so in hosta catalogues it is always the first one. It was hybridized by Tony Avent who disdained naming plants with poetic names. One of his other hostas in my garden is called ‘Elvis Lives’