Friday frivolity: A strange interlude

As I ponder a dream I had last night.  I was in a large open field, in which apparently some of it was our own personal garden.  It was this time of year, a grey cloudy day, and I was pulling up old dead plants and vines.  A couple of my sons were there, though not all.  I don't recall which ones, nor do I think it was made clear in the dream.  I just know they weren't all there.  As I was pulling up some old, brown vines I mentioned to them that I still needed to remove the hyacinths.  

The hyacinths?  Hyacinths?  Why them?  I'm sure I've seen some in my life, but never have we tired to grow them or even have them in the house that I'm aware of.  I don't even know if we could.  I'm not a big flower person.  I know the basics and the famous ones.  For instance, I can tell a rose from a dandelion or a carnation. But I'm no floral expert.  So why hyacinths?  Why not roses, or violets, or even tomato plants? What is the significance?  

The only thing I can think is that we watched the old DVD version of Andrew Lloyd Webber's Cats last night for pizza night. Not the horrific nightmare movie that came out on the eve of Covid.  It was the delightful filmed version of the Broadway phenomenon that was released in the late 1990s.  My third son, as physically strong and outgoing as he is, has a soft spot for musicals, including musical theater.  Phantom of the Opera is one of his favorites.   He also loves Cats.  So last night, with three of the brothers available (the other one is in play practice this week for a local theater production of Miracle on 34th Street), we decided to watch that for his sake.  He's had some pretty rough weeks at his workplace, and we thought that might cheer him up. 

While we were watching, we were talking (as we often do over things we've seen before) about Webber's success with this production. One of the biggest Broadway hits of the century, displaced only by his next musical Phantom of the Opera.  We said Webber had a knack for taking some pretty obscure sources and making them work, such as a musical based on Eliot's work Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats.  We said it's easy in hindsight, but how does one make such a book of poetry into a smash hit musical?  Then my oldest son quipped that sure Webber  made this one work, but did he ever try a musical based on The Waste Land? 

I wonder.  Could that be the connection?  That's the best I can come up with. Dreams are weird they say, but I've never read much into them.  Nonetheless, it did strike me as random.