Garden Clubbing

Today I went to my neighborhood monthly garden club meeting. We meet in the daytime, which is one reason why there is no one else even close to my age that attends. It's just me and about 25 octogenarian ladies.

I love it that I am the Spring-iest chicken there. It's a guarantee that I will be the youngest lady at each meeting. Also, there's something so maternal about most of these women, and it feels similar to the way I use to feel around Mom and her friends. Most of the time, I'm way more entertained by the members themselves than I am by the actual speakers that are lined up to teach us things about "gardening". (I put that word in quotation marks because very few of our topics have anything to do with gardening.)

I don't even really care what the speaker is talking about. For me, the magical moments are the chit chatting before the meeting starts, and then the funniest stuff of all comes when we do the business portion of the meeting. One lady always reads a meditation- Very corny poetry about living a good life. AWESOME. Another woman reads the minutes from the last months meetings and that is hilarious. She writes down every little thing that was discussed, what we voted on, who was there, who had a broken hip, etc. I don't know how she's able to remember it and get it all written down. I certainly couldn't. Another one of our members is in charge of sending out the get well cards to the members who aren't in attendance. We also have a lady who reports to us about dues, bills, and how much money our little garden club has in the bank. Usually, the president of our club gets really mad at someone during some part of the program. It's always hilarious to see because most of the ladies are just so sweet, but this particular woman can get a little nasty. And the rest of us get a little afraid.

I cannot tell you how much I love going to these meetings. It is about 2 hours of the best entertainment and I find myself laughing for days afterwards.

The era of the old fashioned garden clubs seem to be winding down. Lots of the younger women in my neighborhood work in the day, or they have little kids to tend to and just don't have the time. I am so, so lucky I have a flexible daytime schedule! The only inflexible time I have, is that time, on those Thursday with my garden club friends.