She lived all alone in a big brick home
Filled with Italian renaissance art
She stuffed every room like some overgrown balloon
Because she couldn’t stand to keep it in her heart.
 
Just a young girl from Tazewell, Virginia
She married a rich man from Italy
‘Cept that he died before her, so she just grew shorter
Without benefit of company
 
(chorus)
And the moon just kept getting older
And the tide moves in ways she couldn’t see
But Docia Renneiro tends to her garden
And she never fights with the weeds.
 
Sometimes we’d help her, me and John McWhorter
In her garden until about three
And Docia Renneiro always had lots of cookies
And always had on a pot of tea.
 
Now, we’d be down there struggling in our youthful garden glory
She’d be looking down from the kitchen with a grin
‘cause we had no way of knowing no matter how hard we pulled
the weeds would always come in.
 
(chorus)
 
When she died her family came after all of the Italian art
They stripped the walls bare ‘til not a nail was left there
And then they began to depart
 
Now her home’s all condos and the garden’s a parking lot
But every now and again
When I go back I sneak a peak through the cracks
Just to see how many weeds have come in.
 
(chorus)