Puppet painters full sleeve on upper arm

The marrow has finally given up pretending to be a pumpkin, so I have stopped waiting for it to become one. It sits at the bottom of the bed like a green barrow someone forgot to push, and every morning I find Ogden asleep against it with his palette in his lap, as if he were guarding it from thieves. He says the wet paint smells of runner beans. He is wrong, but I haven't told him.

I finished the portrait of you on Thursday, the one with the easel tilted so you look down your nose at the sunflowers. Ogden insisted the sunflowers were too cheerful for a serious sitter. I told him a flower only looks cheerful to people who have never spent a winter in a shed with a dripping roof. We argued until the kettle boiled dry, which is how most of our best ideas begin.

Something odd happened on Friday. I went to wash my brushes and found one missing, and in its place stood a single orange blossom, painted so exactly that I tried to pick it off the jar. Ogden swore he hadn't touched it. I don't think he is lying. I think the garden has been practising.

Come up in June. Bring the good turpentine and not the cheap stuff Mr Hobb sells. The marrow will be ready by then, and I want you to see what we have made of it.

Yours, with green fingers, Marigold