I woke up this morning with a recurring nightmare. No, not the one where you’re running through the halls of your college, frantically looking for the room where you are supposed to take your exam. I have that one, too, but whenever I awake, I tell myself that it is only a dream and I never have to take a calculus exam again.

This other dream is that it is 10 minutes before the start of our Garden Conservancy tour and there is nobody to take tickets, there are dogs running all over the place, I forgot to clean the powder room and I have nothing to wear. Except for the dog part, this dream could be true.

The first time I ever met someone whose garden had been on The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program, I asked her what she had done to prepare for it. “Well, to start,” she said, “we painted the house and replaced the roof.” Well, our roof is fine, but we did paint the house. Now we find that everything else needs replacing, repairing, repainting, or replanting. You have no idea how decrepit your place is until you open it to visitors for charity.

The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days Program is based on a British program where thousands of gardeners all over England open their gardens to the public for a fee that goes to charity. The annual Yellow Book lists every garden that is open, its location, a description of the garden, directions and parking instructions.

Every weekend, it is a national pastime to go somewhere and look at beautiful gardens. Some gardens are huge estates. Some are charming cottage gardens. Some are cutting edge. Some are cute and quaint.

Well, The Open Days Directory is the American version of The Yellow Book, and Rose Cottage, our garden is in it for the first (and Ted says the last) time. On Saturday, June 12. Instead of buying the book, you can go on the Garden Conservancy’s web site and see the directory. They will even send you notices when gardens in your area are open.

To be accepted, a Garden Conservancy representative has to look at your garden and interview you. Murphy came a year and a half after we requested to be considered, and I could tell she didn’t think much of the front yard. For one thing, I had lots of impatiens planted around, which, as you know, are not very sophisticated. I told her I had written a piece for the New York Times defending impatiens. “Humph,” she said.

However, she seemed to like the back garden, though she asked questions, such as, “What’s that?” as she pointed to some pale pink flowers. “Oenothera rosea ‘Siskiyou,’” I said. Humph. Ted had to tell her the names of his rhododendrons, which are mostly rare or special or hard to grow and look it.

Last month we made a list of what needed doing and how much time each job would take. It is a long list and so far, everything has taken longer than expected. For instance, we were going to take the picket fence down, power wash it, Bondo a few bad places, paint it and put it back up. Well, several sections have to be rebuilt and we decided to add a white birdhouse on a corner post. A three-day job is now taking well over a week, and I can’t find a birdhouse that I like that I can afford. And I still don’t have anything to wear.