I had a dream…

No, really. A real one, you know, while asleep? A very vivid sort of dream, the kind where you wake up and swear you could actually feel, smell and taste what you were dreaming about.

It’s about the fourth time I’ve had it (with minor variations), but it still just tickles the heck out of me. It started a couple weeks ago, after I read a newspaper article about the mess left behind by pot growers – we’ve had a whack of people busted this last year after they grew insane amounts of cannabis inside their Central Valley homes.

Which is one way to keep it from being spotted from the air the way it usually is, I suppose.

Anyway. The article talked about things like ripped out appliances and altered walls (some knocked out to make more room, others added to hide rooms they didn’t want found, stuff like that), strange wiring and piping and all kinds of other debris you would (upon reflection, which I’d never paused for on this topic before this article threw it into my face) naturally expect to be left behind when someone is unexpectedly arrested for transforming an entire suburban dwelling into an indoor growing field.

Apparently, they even left behind the grow beds and lights…I mean, even upon reflection that kind of surprises me. I’d expect the police to impound that kind of stuff as Evidence, you know? "Yes, Your Honor, we’d like to direct the court’s attention to forty THOUSAND watts of growing lights, plus six acres worth of growing tables…"

Hard to say you weren’t up to anything in the face of something like that, right?

Whiiiiiich leads me to the new recurring dream I keep having…which is that I have rearranged the inside of the Den so that I can grow spring and summer vegetables in the dead of winter.

All four of the Denizens now slept in two bunk beds in the master bedroom, while their father and I took over what is now Captain Adventure’s bedroom – formerly the retreat off the master bedroom and thus not a “full” bedroom in size.

You can imagine what my husband’s joy would be, if I proposed we actually do this.

There was a path to the door, and a path into the kitchen – but the rest of the Den was transformed into fields of grow tables, with lights hanging above them and this insanely intricate watering system that siphoned water out of the spa (repurposed as our gray water tank).

I’d even moved the laundry equipment into a sort of lean-to right next to the spa, so that the washing machine’s hose just spat the water straight on in there. Genius!

I had these massive solar panels not only on the roof but over the driveway and even hanging from the limbs of the big tree in front of the house (the neighbors would love that, don’t you think?), which not only powered the lights but charged up these deep-cycle batteries that kept them going at night as well so we could get the “ideal” amount of light and warmth for the strawberries and corn.

Yes. Corn.

Growing inside the house.

Of course, what really cracks me up about this is the way I wake up and think, You KNOW…I COULD maybe put just one or two small grow beds in the front room…

I suspect I may be just a touch overly enthusiastic about the whole gardening thing, here.

Speaking of the garden…there isn’t a whole-whole lot going on out there right now. The colder weather has shown up, which when combined with the shorter days has resulted in the expected-but-still-somehow-disappointing slowing down of plant growth.

Although I did find a tiny little bud of future broccoli on the oldest of the sprouts, and the Brussels sprouts are starting to bud on the stalks.

So, we have that going for us.

I have a minor disaster in the Brussels sprouts, though – there were moths (I think they’re cabbage butterflies) (ack!) that found them very appealing nurseries, and holy smokes did they ever do a number on one of the six plants I have back there. It was a big, robust plant…now it is a shriveled little shell of its former self.

They’ve about killed it…and now they’re moving on to the survivors, with a murderous gleam in their buggy little eyes. They scoff at pepper spray and openly mock oily, soapy water.

However, they’re about to come face-to-face with a bottle of neem oil, bwa-hahahahaha. Hopefully, that’ll put an end to their reign of terror out there.

I planted more peas and green beans a couple weeks ago, and plan to put in another little plot of them today, plus a reseeding of the just-harvested bok choy and spinach beds…and that should be the last of the planting until February around here.

Except of course for things I start inside…you know, to get a jump on spring, when it gets here?

…just maybe one or two rooms little trays of things…