Don’t garden like me.

Oh I have a bountiful garden.  Sometimes its more than we can harvest.  The okra gets enormous before I can cut it.  My tomatoes are a jungle and are splitting.  The cucumbers have taken over the fail squash cages.  Have I mentioned I’m choking on cucumbers?  And peppers.  SO many peppers!

When we moved to our two acres in the woods on the side of a ridge, it was massively overgrown.  The original owner had taken great pains with the yard.  Stacked rock walls, flowers and plants and arbors and water features.

But the previous owners to us had let it all grow over.  When we moved in it was very clear that the privet hedge and ivy had declared the front yard their territory. We spent the first year hacking it all back into submission.  Finding interesting statues, bird feeders, farm  implements and garden art along the way.  I called it the secret garden.

We still have a lot of taming to do.  There is no way it will be the meticulous botanical garden like space of its hay day.  We just aren’t cut out for that.  I would love to organize the beds for more food cultivation purposes.

So here is the part of my story where the title of this post becomes relevant.

I was having a great dream.  And in my dream my good friend P. Allen Smith (because yes we were best buds in my dream) had come to my house.  He was just about to lay out all the plans and renovations that would turn my secret garden into a micro-farm makeover.  He had blueprints rolled up in his hand.  We were surveying the property.  I was about to receive some divine gardening inspiration…… when the rooster crowed.

See in my dreams, I never hear the crowing as crowing.  No in my dreams, the crowing always sounds like someone screaming in pain.  I tend to think someone is hurt out in our woods or being attacked.  I always wake with a start and the much loved by my husband “What was THAT!?”

So not only did a awake at o’ dark 30 on a Sunday morning but he deprived me of the important knowledge that P. Allen was going to bestow upon me.  I know it was going to be lovely and awe inspiring and totally manageable.  I just know it.