untended mental gardens
I tend not to dream at night, or at least not to remember my dreams—unlike Harvey, who's been praying lately to not have any dreams or nightmares, poor guy. But last night was an exception, and one feature of my nighttime revery was noticing that I had a whole section of garden plowed and prepared but lying fallow. This isn't the first time something like this has occurred to my subconscious brain: a while ago in a similar dream it turned out that I had forgotten about a whole side of the yard—a half-acre or so—prepared with beds and, in that case, even some plantings (which were doing well).
There's an obvious connection to real life here. First of all, I think about my garden a lot, and in the spring at least I'm constantly wishing I had more room to play with. At the same time, the size of the yard we have here also means that I do end up neglecting big swathes of it for considerable lengths of time. This year, for example, I put in a pair of elderberry bushes against the fence at the far side of the yard and then forgot about them entirely for well over a week. Happily, they survived, but it was kind of a jolt when I finally did remember them (in the middle of the night, naturally).
Beyond that, though, I also can't help but thinking about metaphorical meanings. Do I have resources available to me that I'm not taking full advantage of? Maybe my subconscious is mad at me for starting to write history books for kids—and even registering a domain name for the purpose—and then abandoning the project. Or maybe I should be praying more, or baking more, or applying for more jobs... good heavens, who knows. In the dream the discovery of the extra beds is a pleasant one, since it means I can grow that much more than I had thought, but in real life that sounds kind of like extra work! You know, I'm beginning to think Harvey has the right idea about dreams after all.