Edited by Rebecca Lomax
Playing in the Dirt
Flower power is a beautiful thing and seeing the city abloom is a terrific sight, but it does mean getting down and dirty. Doing a little civic duty, I headed up a planting project that involved 40 flats of annuals on Tuesday morning. Calling out the garden club forces ended up with 10 of us actually tooled for gardening on this sunny but brisk Cincinnati morning.
I dressed in highway yellow to avoid being hit by oncoming traffic, as our assigned planting was amidst cars traveling in excess of 50 mph. Plus you can only take yourself so seriously, and in highway yellow head to toe, believe me, I wasn't serious! My fellow gardeners made fun of my yellow denim pants until I admitted the pants were at least 12 years old and, while I wasn't sure I could bend over comfortably in them, I did get them zipped. They threw dirt at me pronto.
The city's "master gardener" showed up to supervise us and then yelled at me once and another friend of mine twice for stepping in the perennials. We were more careful underfoot, but we raised our eyebrows at her despite our serious infractions. When I called a universal coffee break, the master gardener looked aghast and thoroughly disgusted, but in my highway yellow what did she expect? We had a gardener's birthday to celebrate and a donut with sprinkles held the candles with a phallic looking glazed twist doused in dripping cream thrown in for kicks.
Three hours later, the flowers were in and the planters dispersed, while four of us hardcore types opted for a continued birthday celebration lunch at Damon's -- on the sports bar side, of course. We opted for a table in the corner, as the talk was sure to be straight out of an episode of Sex in the City. Salads ordered along with a birthday cocktail, we covered Botox injections, silicone lips and celebrity births and landed right on friskier conversation.
The warm weather must bring out the randy in this group, as everyone had a little to add in activity du jour department. It seems Rory likes the great outdoors these days and entertained us with a story of a pit stop at Big Bone Lick State Park on the way home from the recent horse races. She also mentioned the pool house as the likely summer spot with her hubby. Who would suspect?
Tami and Lisa admitted to a trip to the Hustler store, which was in the name of finding birthday gifts. But with tales of vibrating makeup brushes and lipstick tubes, I realized that my toy box might need updating. It sure beats shopping for another pair of black shoes.
When Tami got on the subject of the back door, we suspected the table next to us was following the conversation closely. Lisa swore he finished Rory's sentence with "the shaft" when she couldn't think of the word. Sure enough, upon closer inspection we all knew the guy who was pretending to read his newspaper so intently. I guess it's hard to be incognito when we were laughing like schoolgirls and sharing war stories.
We agreed that with birthdays come the realization that we aren't nearly as worried what our partners think and don't care if others necessarily approve of our lunch conversation, which was vivid and detailed. None of us are qualified smokers, but with the hot talk $4 did buy four cigarettes, which saved all of us from hunting down our partners at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
Departing to return to real life, I didn't know which was dirtier -- the gardening or the luncheon -- but it was all fun. With summer looming on the horizon, the promise of more sordid tales ensures future lunches with the girls!
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