Whose garden was this?

The oceans were blue and birds really flew?

Welcome to new subscribers and regular readers! Thank you for joining me for today’s song, “Whose Garden was This?” by Tom Paxton, sung by John Denver. If you’d like to hear the song before you read about it, I’ve included a YouTube video below the article. For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below.
🔰Note: today’s article is written at a level of TOEIC (PBT) 350, Pre-2, CEFR A2.

Water pollution (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

(233 words)
Today’s song was written by Tom Paxton. He writes songs on many different topics. This song is about the environment, the forests, the rivers, and the air. He wrote the song for the first Earth Day in 1970.

Imagine that we couldn’t grow flowers. What would a garden look like?

Whose garden was this? It must have been lovely
Did it have flowers? I've seen pictures of flowers
And I'd love to have smelled one

If the trees were cut down, what would a forest look like?

Tell me again, I need to know
The forests had trees, the meadows were green
The oceans were blue and birds really flew
Can you swear that was true?

If all the water was dirty, how could fish live?

Whose river was this? You say it ran freely
Blue was its color, I've seen blue in some pictures
And I'd love to have been there

If all the air was dirty, how could birds fly? Could they breathe?

Whose gray sky was this? Or was it a blue one?
You say there were breezes, I've heard records of breezes
And I'd love to have felt one

John Denver sings this song in the video. He also wrote songs about the environment. He thought that we should take care of the water, the land, and the sky. He wanted us to take action to save the planet.

Pulp mill air pollution, Gene Daniels, photographer (Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

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Question

How would you feel if there were no flowers, trees, animals in the rivers and forests, or birds in the air?

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Vocabulary

environment 環境
meadow 牧草地
flew 飛んだ (fly　過去形）
swear 誓う
breathe 呼吸する
breeze そよ風
record 記録

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I believe that education should be free.

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All of the articles about the songs will remain free for students to use. (We are all students, are we not?) However, if you find these articles useful and are in a position to make a small (or large) donation, I would be deeply grateful.

buymeacoffee.com/socialissuesinsong

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英検3級以上 | 名曲で英語を学ぶ