Saint of the Garden

Teeth chattering in the greeny gloom under a rose bush. Rough hands snip the sheers. The Saint of gardeners, cultivators, arborists and horticulturalists. His purview is those that grow things, plants mostly, but he is flexible in who he favours. There’s even been evidence of tiny shrines to him in the lower depths of termite nests, where insects farm maggots and fungi in animal excrement. Also in the automated deep-time superfarm orbitals, where machine intelligences by sheer chance cast upon rituals in his honour. It takes a certain mind to bring something to life in your design. Patience, exactitude, a kind of gentle pragmatism. Love, and the will to handle the secateurs with a deft swift mercy.