Dreaming of roses

Sometime last month, I dreamt of roses. I dreamt I was in a garden filled with roses in rows. It was a bit like a place that I used to visit regularly, Westbury Gardens (which I just googled for the link and discovered is called Old Westbury Gardens - was it always so?).

If you live near Long Island, New York or plan to visit, I highly recommend a visit. Sadly, I thought perhaps if one clicked on the link I provided, you could have a glimpse of what my dream looked like, but no, Old Westbury Gardens doesn't seem to want you to even have a glimpse of their horticultural wonders without visiting in person. Just one lousy photo of a building. Yeah, it's a mansion, but that is not what makes this place so special.

So, my dream started with me strolling through the formal paths of their Rose test gardens. They have many varieties (including the dreaded yellow ones). These gardens, both in reality and in my dreams, are laid out in a series of rooms, which is a wonderful experience (at least for me). I love not being able to see "what's next"; the surprise of it.

In my dream, the rooms became larger and larger until I found myself standing in a field of roses. This was no ordinary field. It was infinite. Roses as far as the eye could see in all directions. The bright blue sky above. I may have twirled a few times in my life, but it's not big in my repertoire of "girly" behaviors. . .but I think I did twirl.

I am having an olfactory hallucination at this moment. I thought I smelled roses. There are none. As soon as I realized I was mistaken, the sense of this stopped. Wow. That was cool.