Loyal to the garden

yellow and pink rosesI had an interesting dream last night. I dreamed I was working for a computer company that had a big office building with very few people working in it. Some of my friends from past jobs worked there. I was only there temporarily but, was doing my best work for them.

One day, I go to the break room and I happen upon this guy I like (currently). He’s someone who has stopped contacting me so, to respect his space, I don’t actively acknowledge him and go about my business getting a cup of water.

He sees me and and says, “Carma, I really have to hand it to you, you are certainly loyal to the garden.”

rose at sunriseI looked at him with a quizzical look on my face and replied, “Loyal to the garden? What does that mean?”

I woke up wondering what that phrase meant. I’m still wondering what it meant. It was said with such weight … more weight than anything else in the dream.

So I jumped on the Internet and looked it up.

I got nothing.

Dreaming of a garden means something … but there were no gardens in my dream.

Dreaming of loyal friends and dogs means something … but that’s not what I was looking for either.

So the phrase “loyal to the garden” keeps echoing in my mind.

bee on a roseI did find a website about Final Fantasy in which “garden” means “school” and one of the characters is “loyal to the garden” meaning that she would do anything for her particular group affiliation.

So I started to research euphemisms … maybe he meant something other than “garden.” I mean, Robert Harbison once said, “Gardens always mean something else, man absolutely uses one thing to say another.”

So what does “garden” represent?

I couldn’t find any slang meanings for garden, although my instinct said it could be another word for “muff” or “beaver”. 🙂

row of rosesGardens often represent a return to innocence (think Garden of Eden).

I found one reference where a garden symbolizes “onging, fertility, and a satisfying love life” … that sounded close. It continued to say “Stepping into a garden is like retreating from the harshness of the outside world, looking for protection and relaxation. In Egypt the garden has always been the symbol for woman.” And, according to Freud, a garden represents female sexuality.

two rosesAnother reference stated that a garden “is a place of growth, a place where the inner life is cultivated.”

And, finally, according to the book Women Who Run With the Wolves (which is in my collection, but still unread), a garden can represent the psyche, a connection to life and death. “Whatever can happen to the garden can happen to soul and psyche.”

So what does it mean to be loyal to the garden? Here’s what my intuition now says:

rose bud on pavementTo be loyal to the garden means to be loyal to your inner guidance and power. It means to trust in the cultivation of your personal growth. It means believing in the power of innocence and the strength in allowing intuition to guide you … no matter how the outer world may laugh at your “odd” beliefs.

So when this man said to me, “you are certainly loyal to the garden” with a inhaled chuckle, he was congratulating me on my tenacity of belief and my steadfast efforts to stand in my feminine power and honor my psychic guidance.

Now that my divorce is final, I’m putting a lot of energy into my love life. I’ve signed up for a Women’s Dating Bootcamp and am reading David Wygant’s new book Naked. I’m fully committed to improving my relationships with men. This time around I want to start out on the right foot. In the past, I usually “fell” into relationships because it was convenient and easy.

red hibiscusI’m not going to do that this time. I want to date a variety of men so that when I do choose to be exclusive, it will be just that … a choice. I will have chosen him, consciously … not just because he was there and asked.

Fortunately, my 12+ year marriage has matured me and I’m already able to enjoy men’s company in a much more mature way than I have in the past. But I’m not going to sit on my laurels and leave things to chance. I’m doing active work to cultivate my relationships with men.

A nice side effect of all this work is that my creativity is expanding, as well. After putting my fiction and poetry on hold (at the request of my ex-husband), I’m feeling my creative juices flowing back and soon will have some fresh new work to share with the world. My creative garden is flourishing!

Just as an interesting side note … I only met this guy last month and he has already made, as of this morning’s dream, four appearances in my dreams. He’s giving Sprocket a run for her money! The most any other person has entered my dreams is twice! I wonder what that means? But, that will have to be another post. 😉


A note on the images for this post: I took them all around the Santa Ana, Calif., neighborhood I lived in circa 2007. I would bring my camera with me while walking Sprocket and loved all the roses in people’s front yards.

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About the author

Carma Spence is an award-winning, bestselling author of nonfiction, however, she has been writing fiction and poetry for much longer -- just not publishing it. She plans to change that sometime soon.