intertext

You didn't! Fire and Hemlock is my absolute all-time favourite DWJ book, if I haven't told you that already. And for that, Eliot, definitely. She admits to it, and it's quite explicit, including the garden imagery. I wish I could take credit for "the cauldron of story" but I think it was Lloyd Alexander, possibly via Tolkien, possibly via the Mabinogion (or at least the cauldron that Taliesin dips his finger into and gains knowledge...). But I just reread that scene from Charmed Life again, and I'll hold out for the CS Lewis connections, although the garden itself has broader associations (there's an apple tree with a bubbling spring at its roots that recalls Norse myth).