This past weekend I got side swiped by a terrible summer cold. Coughing, sneezing, and blowing my nose, my head was thick and slow as the July air. I kept a box of Kleen-X within arm’s reach and the tea kettle hot on the stove.

The cats and I tried to make the best of things. We napped. We fought over the comforter. We read a couple chapters of “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.” I swallowed more cold medicine, then we napped some more.

Though I was too miserable to check on the garden, I had plenty of dreams about it. Some I remember only in bit in pieces. Some were quite ordinary.

In the strangest dream, the Minnesota legislature voted to relocate Burnsville’s Buck Hill Ski Area in our back yard. Brian and I appealed to the city of St. Louis Park. We begged them to wait until the end of the growing season, but no one could help us.

Soon chairlifts and snow machines took over our yard. Ski and snowboard instructors invaded our house.

I tried to save the garden from the cold and from the careless. I surrounded the beds with barbed wire and shouted profanities at thrill-seekers who got too close to my veggies.

“I just wanted one tomato! ONE F%#!ING TOMATO! Is that too much to ask?”

One night, Buck Hill management decided they had enough of the cuckoo and her carrots scaring away all their customers. They took matters into their own hands and worked out a little business arrangement with a man known as “The Slicer.”

“Don’t worry about nuthin’,” he smiled while sharpening his knife, “I can take care of this business liablity.”

The next morning, The Slicer’s handiwork was waiting for me. He had slashed though the barbed wire and uprooted all my plants. After dicing everything into bite-sized pieces, The Slicer spread my garden like salsa along Cedar Lake Road. I could hardly tell a pepper from a tomato.

Coughing and sneezing, I bolted awake at 3:48 a.m Sunday morning. I was mad as hell and determined to burn down a chairlift.

Yeah, maybe I should lay off all the NyQuil.

Do you have dreams about your garden?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 26th, 2005 at 3:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.