It seems young Sarah’s new friends got her into a spot of bother. A two-day school suspension sort of bother, and her mother is refusing to let her spend it lolling about, staring at screens.

She phoned me after confiscating Sarah’s mobile for the duration. I could hear the howls of affronted horror clear across the airwaves.

The long and the short is I have a garden assistant today. Sarah trudged up my driveway with the weight of her world on her shoulders and more tragedy than Hamlet trailing in her wake.

She didn’t get the cup of tea and sympathetic ear she clearly thought she deserved. Instead, I handed her a water bottle and led the way down, past the pond, to the harvest garden.

Holmeshallow Farm has a good-sized kitchen garden, with a decent mix of herbs and vegetables, but it was nothing on mine.

For starters, mine has a section for poisons.

Sarah was kept well away from that area, she probably didn’t even know it was there – the advantage of a walled garden that people don’t know the dimensions of, is that you can have a couple of extra walls, a couple of extra rooms…

Today’s tasks were of the mundane variety. No harvesting of dewdrops by moonlight or rose petals at the first blush of dawn. I needed to replenish my stocks of basic dried herbs (rosemary – a core ingredient for far too many potions to count, bay leaves, thyme, oregano, mint, and a few more). And of course there is always weeding to be done, even in a witch’s garden.

Most of the weeds are useful in their own right, but they have a nasty habit of wandering out of their assigned beds and bullying other plants.

I handed Sarah a set of gardening gloves and set her to work on one of the seedling beds. She could weed until she started complaining, and then she could make a start on the harvest. I was doing exactly the same thing. There’s nothing like having the adult in charge of your ‘punishment’ working at the identical tasks to take the wind out of a self-righteously indignant tween.

We made it through the two largest vegetable beds before mutterings of mutiny began. We stopped for tea and biscuits, then set to with the secateurs. To her credit, once Sarah forgot she was doing penance, she mucked in quite happily, asking questions about the purpose and treatment of the various plants around us, and chattering about school and her ‘so cool’ friends.

I let her get on, it was nice to have the company and while I query her judgement on those girls she’s so enchanted by, her observations on the people and procedures at her school were clear-eyed and witty.

We lugged an impressive haul back up the garden at lunchtime and after a quick meal of quiche and summer pudding, we got on with filling the drying rack.

I sent her on her way just after afternoon tea, with the leftover pudding. She scuffed a toe in the gravel outside the back door and said. “Thank you, it’s been a pretty good day.”

I let myself look amused. “Pretty good for a horrible punishment?”

I got a hint of a half smile. “Yeah. Mum says I should think about asking to spend a morning with you some weekends, rather than hanging out at the shops with the girls. Would it be okay if I did that? Just sometimes…”

“That sounds delightful. I can always do with an extra pair of hands, especially when they’re attached to a quick mind. You let me know when you have a shopping-free morning, and we’ll see how it matches to my odd jobs and orders.”

A small bounce, she’s still a child at times after all. “I will, thank you!”

And off she went. A little less of a sheep, and a little more of a witch than she’d been that morning.

Related posts