Mustard Seeds and Tares

Drayton is still fuming over the potato cakes. And I must say, so am I. We've run out of waxed paper and had to start wrapping the Ginger Nuts in tin foil, and that's really losing that homely touch I was hoping for.

But he's a strange character, Drayton. He decided, at the start of the spring, to act out a living parable in his garden. So he mixed up a mixture of mustard seed and a load of poppy seeds, and planted them all in the vegetable patch. He told me that he was going to let them grow as a reminder that, though the poppies grow up amongst the mustard trees (which become as tall as trees and the birds of the air come and shelter in them) he would leave the poppies to grow amongst them - even though they are weeds - and only at harvest time would he sort the mustard from the poppies, and burn the poppies on the fire.

This was wrong on so many levels.

For one thing, the white mustard isn't so tall the birds can shelter in it. Frankly a budgie would have trouble finding a perch. And for the other, the mustard's an ugly plant.

And the poppies are blooming now, and look absolutely lovely. So Marjory's on at Drayton to root up the mustard so she can enjoy the poppies without "those useless oil-seed rape looking things" spoiling the view. Drayton's trying to explain to her that the mustard must remain until the end of the summer, when he will burn the poppies in the fire and gather the mustard into barns. Marjory's asking him what he thinks he's going to do with a load of tatty brassica plants anyway? And the kids keep nipping over the fence trying to work out which part of the plants to squeeze to get the mustard out. There's a rumour going round that you can get it by squeezing the tap roots very hard, so to add to Drayton's worries there are now dead mustard plants (or, in Drayton's word, "trees" lying all over his backyard). That'll teach him to mix his parables.