Myrtle lives the life of the genteel bachelor. He has a lovely flower garden, and an herb garden outside his bedroom window that smells just divine in the warmth of the morning sun. His cottage is light and airy, and there are always masses of blossoms hanging to dry from the rafters, amidst the copper pots. He has a little picket fence around his garden which he keeps painted spanking white, and he loves to walk about his yard in his bare feet just after a rain when the grass is all drippy and cool. Myrtle is well known in Trillium Bramble for his dandelion wine, which everyone pitches in to concoct twice each summer: once at the end of spring when the plants are all fresh and green and everyone's glad to shake off the last chill of winter, and again in September when the sun's beginning to go, and everyone likes to think about having a little cordial in deep midwinter that tastes of the blazing warmth of summer.
He doesn't keep his recipe a secret, but everyone agrees that somehow it just comes out better when Myrtle makes it, so it is in his kitchen that the piles of blossoms are plucked and mashed and steamed and fermented and bottled. The trick is most likely the bunch of hydrangea that Myrtle always manages to knock off the ceiling and into the soup, as it were, just when it's too hot to grab it back out. Of course, most of Trillium Bramble would tell you that this is a necessary part of the recipe, and not an accident at all. But everyone also loves the way that it makes Opie squeal with such delight every darn time, so each year there's a bunch of hydrangea hanging suspiciously over the stove...
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7.5" tall.
