Craic On

The Sister has a wonderful garden. It’s awash with colour and raspberries. It’s full of interesting quirks: Planting, statues, places to sit, bee hives and fruiting trees. We enjoy a stroll. She tells me what she’s been up to in the garden and I throw out the odd comment. “That’s nice. I like that,” I say encouragingly. “That’s a lump of concrete I dug up.” I’m not deterred from commenting on her efforts even though I seldom have quite enough information to make an informed comment. “That’s interesting. Are those a couple of stone lions standing guard to the artichokes?” “that’s the legs to the garden bench.” She’s only laughed once when I asked “what is that? Some kind of sculpture?” “It’s a plant and it’s dead.” The Sisters’ garden is a place we sit and drink tea and blather together. She’s quite accomplished at blathering as well as gardening, and she makes a decent cup of tea. After she’d made the tea and while she was blathering I began to consider the beautiful wave of pale grey blue under her