Step into the Garden, Mrs Smith

I’ve got a whacking great sow thistle in my Mystery Bed, the bit of my garden where God spits his pips. It’s got a red rude stalk and flowers like scruffy little suns and I haven’t decided whether to use it or eat it or both. There’s groundsel and willowherb in there too, and milk thistle and mint and a woundwort I’m keeping as a pet. The whole garden is doing well, although I’ve been so busy growing wormwood and datura that I’ve forgotten to plant any bloody tomatoes.

We took our sacks to Cyril’s Wood and at the gate swayed a lady in her Sunday anorak who told us as we passed ‘You can’t repent.’ Watch me, bitch, I thought, but I held onto Mr Smith’s hand just in case. We eavesdropped on the poplars and petted the goat willow and I found a white rhododendron playing ignis fatuus in the undergrowth, and two yellow balloons.

Herbs Bennet and Robert have popped up by the back gate. Bennet for the exorcist of the house, Robert for his puckish assistant. Rafts of toadflax too, but you have to be careful with that because if you eat too much of it Christ will appear to you in a dream and give you his foreskin as an engagement ring and you might not have the emotional bandwidth to deal with that on a Sunday night when you have work in the morning.

Soon the garden will be completely full, no space for even the tiniest of seedlings. There will be just enough room for me and Mr Smith and the child (and the cats if they stack) to sit out and soak it in and raise our glasses to Heramael. That’s the most important part of gardening. The love, and the G&Ts.