There are several answers to this question. There’s the poem by Shakespeare, the play by Edward Albee, the song by Schubert and the TV sitcom starring Charlie Drake to name but a few (+1 for the pedantic). I may have broadened your knowledge already. But actually I don’t care. My question is “Who is Max?”

Max, or rather Max’s Garden, is a current star of Gill Heavens’ blog (in a way that Lord and Lady Mantle’s estate is no longer). Is Max the son of Max’s dad, who often helps Gill in his (Max’s) garden? Or, as I suspect, is he a dog? I say I suspect because the other day I was reading back through Gill’s blog looking for a bit of inspiration (watch this space!) and Resident Cat suddenly reared up on my lap and hissed at the computer screen, I noticed that Max had appeared in the paragraph in focus. So I guess he is a dog; resident cat rarely hisses at anything other than dogs. Well other than dogs, Whiskas cat food, worming pills, the stuff he gets on the neck for fleas once a month, refusal by me to let him get somewhere he wants to go and if I won’t play games with him at three in the morning!

So if Max can have a garden, I am now commanded to refer to the garden here not as “Rivendell” any more but as “Pillster’s”. I am conscious that he’s sitting on my lap as I write this and if he were to flex his claws, where his paws are now, well, you can work it out.

He will be the nameless one no longer. Though he often does a pretty good job at impersonating him!

This post is part of my “Fill the Gill Heavens Gap” series. Gill is currently vacationing in a derelict badger sett and subsisting on a diet of cheese and onion crisps. Normal service will be resumed over at Off the Edge Gardening when the gin supplies run out.