In the last year I have begun to have many dreams that take place in large, beautiful greenhouses. Always in the dream I’m a stranger entering it. It is always tall, with a two-story roof. It is always attached to a lovely house owned by a person I like. It is always planted up as an indoor garden, with paths made of stone, still wet from the daily watering. Decorative trees hang overhead, large potting benches are weighed down with the kind of hand-thrown pots that Tasha Tudor and Martha Stewart brag about. I get the feeling that should I stay till evening, there would be fairy lights strung around. The light in it is green-gray and suggestive of the house it’s connected to; dark polished wood, thick carpets, lovely dark and deep.
In college when I was a biology major, the very best lab days took place in the university greenhouses, and the very best experience I had while volunteering in a laboratory was the day that another student took me with her to do her daily pollen collection from a whole greenhouse full of Easter lilies. What a lovely life it would be, I thought, if I could spend a part of each day pulling the stamens out of these lovely flowers, in the warmth and sunshine and blissful solitude.
The greenhouse is a place where things grow, blossom, fruit, and yes–die and decay. It’s a place where one grows things but without the backbreaking labor of agriculture. It is protected from rain and wind and snow, and also from pests, both to plant and to human. It is place to nourish rare and beautiful things, a place to protect things over the harsh winter, and a place from which to reap colorful, flavorful, deliciously scented rewards. A greenhouse is a private place. A greenhouse is the secret world of its owner, just as much as a walled garden.
The greenhouse is beautiful, elegant, earthy, serene, intimate, exhilarating. I don’t know why I keep dreaming about it or what it means, but I wish I could write exactly the right story to happen in it.
Bedtime Stories for Everyone 