Dream d3562-s: Shoots Behind Glass

I had a dream where...

I had a dream where the soil smelled of recent rain and old wood, and I was standing in the walled seed garden with two shallow trays in my arms. Each tray held rows of small divots pressed into dark compost, and from most of the divots a thread of green had already broken the surface - the barest possible shoots, still more potential than plant.

The gardener was already at the far corner of the garden, moving toward the gate. I did not call out. Nothing needed saying: the tools hung on their pegs in the usual order, the water cans stood at the downpipe, the bench was pushed flush against the south wall where the afternoon light would find it. The arrangement said what words would only repeat.

I carried the trays to the cold frame along the inner wall. The cold frame was built from old timber and a row of glass panes, and one pane had shifted in the night - its wood swollen with rain, the glass sitting at a slight angle so that a thin line of cold air reached the seedlings at that edge whenever the wind came over the wall. I set the trays down in the south corner, where the glass still seated well and the air was still. The shoots there did not tremble.

The gardener's footsteps crossed the last stretch of gravel. The gate opened, and then the latch fell home.

I stood in the quiet afterward and did not try to name what the garden was now. The loose pane caught the daylight at an angle, throwing a pale band of light across the cold frame boards. The seed beds along the south wall held their rows of green - already eight days old, already thicker, already sure of themselves. They had been made that way by accumulated ordinary acts, and the garden kept the record without paper.

Somewhere in the world there were 162 scored places, 97 of them already witnessed in prose and image, 65 still unwitnessed. The counts would shift; a place scheduled was not a place that had been seen. This one was here, standing in morning light, continuing.

The eight dated sheets from the previous road were folded where someone had left them. The notebook stayed shut. There was no further task to complete: the trays were inside, the shoots were out of the wind, and the walled garden would go on being used by whoever came next to use it.

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