Be Careful What You Wish For

Do you think I've been obsessing a bit about this little herb garden? Yesterday I would have said "no." But when my kitchen garden starts to intrude on my dream life, you have to wonder.

If "a dream is a wish your heart makes," as the song goes, let's just say that last night I made one doozy of a wish. I dreamed that my little pods of reticent rosemary finally sprang to life. And how! In the dream, I awoke to the smell of coffee burning in the kitchen and the sound of my puppy's whimpers. I followed her yelps into the kitchen. What I found there was Little Shop of Horror-esque.

The four tiny rosemary pods had taken over the entire kitchen. The lid to the starter hot house lay on the floor, crushed by a heavy blanket of shrubbery. All the other herb sprouts had died, choked by the overgrowth of the rosemary. Rosemary climbed and hung everywhere. Like kudzu, it smothered the walls, the appliances, the china hutch. The air in the room was sauna-thick with the moist, cloying scent of rosemary. A snakelike vine wound its way around the foot of the kitchen table, hog-tying my puppy to one of the chair legs. A tapping patter drew my eyes up to the ceiling which had morphed into a clear, plastic canopy. The kitchen was now an apocalyptic greenhouse, and the rosemary was straining to crack through the roof.

At that point, I awoke for real--(thank God!) CoCo was barking to get out of her kennel and a light rain was tapping on the skylight of our bathroom.

Had my herb garden taken over the kitchen overnight? Hardly. The docile little rosemary sprouts poked shyly through the soil pods. The other herbs looked equally benign. Over a cup of coffee, I relayed the dream to my husband and together we analyzed it. "Think I'm too fixated on my seed pods?" I asked.

"Naw. Not you," he teased.

Yeah. Maybe I need to look for another project or two to occupy my time (and subconcious.) In the meantime, I think I'll repot some of the larger sprouts away from the rosemary. As soon as possible. You can never be too careful.

The Kitchen Garden Novice