In her garden she grows gloves for foxes and snow stars for the winter queen and spanish bluebells for faery sleighs in the neatest rows you’ve seen.

Beneath the Erlking’s bower, the golden dream fish play, she feeds them bread and gooseberries, sings to them every day. If wishes were fishes, if fishes were wishes, her mother used to say.

Today was washing on the line and the chance of rain and houndstooth skirts and crunchy apples and curling up on the grass beneath the Jacaranda tree in a small pile of blankets to read.

I have a secret love for Spiderwick. It reminds me to look for Stray Sods on our lawn and inspect patches of red clover and leave a little warm milk with honey and bread in the old shell at the bottom of the garden.