Pink bow skull with crossbones

Don't tell Mum, but the bone-and-bow business has got out of hand. Mr Pargeter from the allotments caught me at the gate this morning holding a skull in one hand and a trowel in the other, and he asked whether I was planting or auditioning for the pantomime. I told him the skull was a gift from Aunt Dot, who would not be told that she is the reason I now own something that winks at people.

Her name is Pansy, if you must know, after the pansies Dot set in the old tub by the greenhouse before she went into the home. Pansy has heart-shaped eyes, one of them shut tight in a wink, and a spotted pink bow tied on as though she is off to a dance. She sits on two crossed bones I dug up under the rhubarb. Dot swore the bones belonged to a dog called Biscuit. I have decided not to ask.

Anyway, the swirls. I went down the lane behind the shed and cut back every bramble that had been trying to swallow the fence, and somewhere under them I found the pink climbing rose Dot planted the year you were born. It has been flowering for a week as if it heard the news. Pansy would approve, I think, though she would pretend she didn't.

So she's on the windowsill above the seed trays, bow straight, facing the garden. The first runner beans are up. Come at the weekend and bring the good secateurs. You can meet her properly and decide for yourself whether she is winking at you or at the rhubarb.

Love, Maud