Everything You Need to Know About Being a Woman Can Be Learned in the Garden

By Patricia Fish

Truly in this book, everything one needs to know about being a woman CAN be learned in the garden.

They meet as a team and tell their funny, but very enlightening stories.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LifeRich Publishing
• Release date: Oct 25, 2019
• ISBN: 9781489725912

Patricia Fish

Patricia Fish is a dedicated social media writer and loves to write humorous fiction. She is a news and political junkee and has Blogs that detail daily life, reviews books, movies and TV.

Book preview

Everything

You Need

to Know

About Being

a Woman

Can Be

Learned

in the Garden

PATRICIA FISH

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Copyright © 2019 Patricia Fish.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

LifeRich Publishing is a registered trademark of The Reader’s Digest Association, Inc.

LifeRich Publishing

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Bloomington, IN 47403

www.liferichpublishing.com

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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2590-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4897-2591-2 (e)

LifeRich Publishing rev. date: 10/24/2019

Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 The Hillery Beach Garden Club

Chapter 2 Female as Adolescent

Chapter 3 Appearances Count

Chapter 4 The Child-Bearing Years

Chapter 5 Domestic Bliss

Chapter 6 Menopausal Mania

Chapter 7 Bringing Home the Bacon

Chapter 8 The Golden Years

Chapter 9 The Well-Organized Woman

Chapter 10 Female as Wife

Chapter 11 Men are blue jays…..Women are Cardinals

Chapter 12 Female as Mother

Chapter 13 Female Role Models

Chapter 14 Female as Employee

Chapter 15 The female sex object

Chapter 16 Female as Human

Introduction

O ne thing we all definitely agree on is that we are going to write a book about writing this book. It took a two years to compile, compose and configure. The arguments, talks and loud discussions wore us to a frazzle and had several contemplating a visit to Dr. Kevorkian. We cried, laughed, sang, hugged, hated, loved, spit and cursed. We all decided we would never do this again, even though we had already agreed we would. Collectively agreeing to take two completely opposite actions was de rigueur for this little group. Yet, unbelievably, we got the book written!

We all concur; it is a most wonderful book.

Even though we wrote this introduction after the book was written, we still can’t agree how the format came to be. One might think we should know how the format came to be, since the format already exists. There you have it; another example of how organized and efficient is this little group.

All of us do acknowledge the very first time the book concept was initiated. It was when our scribe came to the meeting full of breathless tales about a show she had watched. She said it was the Sally Jessie O’Donnell Show, but we knew she was confused. She was not confused about the talk show guest that had so offended and amused her.

We patiently waited while Cindy set the scene, background and characters. Her marvelous ability to do this is why we made her the group scribe; but what might be fun to read can be a bit of a pain to hear.

There was Sally O’Donnell with those red glasses and looking sooooo solemn, Cindy described. Her ‘regular-people’ guests were three women who were looking to put some oomph into their love life.

As Cindy expounded on the story, she waved her arms around to represent the exclamation points and semi-colons she could not relate in the verbiage of her spoken tale.

Her star-type guest was Ruth Wizenheimer. You know her, old lady, supposed to be an expert on sex? Cindy stopped so we could nod our heads. We knew better than to try to actually say something.

Well, listen to this load of crap: the nutty old lady was describing fun sex play involving throwing onion rings at your partner’s private part!

Cindy paused for appropriate dramatic emphasis, as we absorbed the concept of greasy onion rings tossed as horseshoes around the peg landing on what we assume is a perpendicular male member.

Charlotte blurted Henry and I did that just last week!

This unexpected admission, of course, took the wind out of the Cindy-and-the-onion-ring story, as Cindy was about to launch into her impromptu stand-up routine re: fried vegetables and pubic hairs. No doubt she planned to lambast anyone who would engage in such bizarre behavior. She was stunned to muteness at Charlotte’s confession.

I’m only kidding, Charlotte retracted. I saw that show, Cindy, and thought the same as you: onion rings in the bedroom, can you imagine?

Only momentarily nonplused and granted the reprieve by Charlotte, Cindy launched into her routine.

Now, here are three women guests on this Sally O’Donnell show….just average type women, like all of us, Cindy stated, as she nodded to our group, as if any of us, in the daily course of our human lives, would be a guest on the Rosie Winfrey Show to seek additional information on our sex lives and tossed vegetables.

What really pisses* me off, this Dr. Ruth Wizenheimer is telling these women this kind of crap. These women think this dried up old prune is an ‘expert’ and what has she done here?

Cindy started winding up her arms and we knew she was about to come to the moral of her story.

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***One of our members who feels very strongly about cursing would like to have publicly inserted that she disapproves of such language. Since she says not to reveal her identity, all we can say is she is a member of the Garden Club and does not like the curse words.

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First, the old biddy has the women feeling REALLY inferior now. Surely any modern and happening kind of women is imaginative enough to play ring-around-the-penis with onion rings. Second, these women are going to go home, fire up the deep fryer and wait for husband to come in from the day’s labors. Now, imagine if you are these husbands.

Obediently, we imagined our husbands coming home to the smell of frying onions and wives dressed in split-crotched panties. We could see where Cindy was going here.

"The dingbat woman, on the advice of Wizenheimer, whispers sweet nothings into hubby’s ear. He, we assume here, agrees to a bedroom interlude, no doubt somewhat concerned that his wife plans to concurrently cook dinner and make love."

Cindy again inserted a well-positioned pause as we again pondered the unsuspecting husband and calculating wife.

The guy is down to his birthday suit, and in comes his wife with a bowl of onion rings. I’m not even sure if this Wizenheimer broad instructed to allow the rings to cool, Cindy continued, on a roll now.

The wife picks up one of the onion rings and playfully tosses it in the direction of her husband’s most private part which has never known the feel of a greasy, hot and well-breaded onion ring upon it. What do you think this guy is going to do?

Cindy stopped as we followed instructions and pondered what the guy is going to do.

As if permission were granted to speak, we all animatedly offered our opinion of what the guy would do.

Jean laughed, My husband would probably just take away the bowl of onion rings and tactfully suggest that we used whipped cream instead.

Melanie shook that long beautiful hair of hers and offered, I think James would probably ask that I wait for them to cool. But yes, James would probably go along with the game.

Trudy, who is 53 and the oldest member of our group, gave a hoot. I can tell you if I ever tried anything like that with Ray he would love it! First you would have to get him off the floor where he would no doubt be from a drop-dead faint.

The rest of the attendees that night continued to throw in their conclusions as to what the guy would do. The general consensus was that the guy would most likely oblige in some sort of fashion. Cindy, at this point, is beside herself, because this was not the ending to the story she envisioned.

You all are just saying that, Cindy said to resume control of the narration, You know darn right well your husbands would think you all were nuts. The most that would probably happen is like Jean said…he might request a substitute of whipped cream for onion rings.

Cindy leaned her upper torso into the group and started pounding the table to bring home the belabored and brilliant point she would make, were it not for the likes of us and our perverted mates.

This gets on my nerves. These people get on the tube and tell all the women of America how to live, what to like, when to leave, who to love, where to learn and why we lust. That Joyce Sisters person was on another talk show….the late night guy….Jay O’Brien? This broad is telling us to emulate Princess Diana!

Cindy stopped for another pregnant pause as we pondered emulating Princess Diana. No one spoke at this point because we rather thought the Princess dressed quite well and wouldn’t find such emulation likely to make us lesser persons. Somehow we knew that this was most definitely not the point Cindy was making, since her tone dripped derision to those of us who would emulate Diana.

Princess Di is a nut case who calls married men five thousand times through the night, married a jug-eared prince and is the mother of kings!

Cindy pointedly stopped here. We knew her climax was reached and we were collectively expected to understand the point.

None of us did.

How are these people role models? Cindy continued fluidly, as she knew that our group dotage required that she finish the moral.

Princess Di? Can women relate to that? Onion rings on a private part? 95 year old women who profess to be the whimsical love gurus that would bring you permanent bedtime happiness? Some sibling doctor type that offers Princess Di as heroine to the women of America?

While we did not actually see the question marks in Cindy’s narrative, we knew they were there. Such oral questions marks usually were followed by the culmination of the current observation coupled with the proposed solution.

Don’t you see? Cindy continued with yet another question mark, We are going to have to write the book!

When she ends with an exclamation point like that, we start to get concerned. The last time she did that, we ended up owning some remote and rural strip of road. Such quasi-ownership required that we spend three hours every other week cleaning up the litter.

Here we are, Cindy started in earnest, a group of solid middle-age women. We have been through puberty and we have been through menopause. We’ve been single, divorced, widowed and married. Some of us have had abortions. Most of us have children. We’ve been daughters, sisters, employees, supervisors and mistresses. Between us, we know it all! It is up to us to provide to the young women coming up some documentation of our experiences. We can’t just turn away and leave them to follow the directions of the advice gurus. Heck, we are going to have a whole generation of women believing that marrying princes and tossing food in the boudoir is the key to happiness. It is us who can tell them the truth.

Cindy ended leaving us bewildered as to exactly who in this group had an abortion and to really go nuts trying to figure out who is a mistress.

Thus began composition of a self-help book that would be written by a group of middle-aged women who, until the novel, had only membership in a garden club as the commonality.

Then began the arguments as to exactly what sort of advice we would jointly proffer and in what manner.

It was a general consensus that we would relate our garden experiences, since we are a garden club. Somehow, we jointly decided, we will have to parallel the garden tales with the journey to becoming a mature woman.

Then our quiet member, Sarah, said that she really thought we needed to have some domestic advice in the book. We looked at her, quite shocked.

Look, you say you want to compose a down-to-earth book here. One every woman- young, old, middle-aged, can relate to, right?

We nodded our collective heads. Indeed, that was our plan.

Well, let’s face it, most women are going to bear the burden of running the domicile. That has not really changed in our life time.

To please Sarah, we have included hints on how to make meatballs that do not turn into a frying pan full of unstructured ground beef.

Finally agreeing to focus on the varying roles in a woman’s life as well as the diverse growth stages, we now had to ascertain by what vehicle we were going to do the deed.

Cindy, our elected scribe, wanted to book to be in the first person voice. We would zero in on a topic, outlined Cindy, and each member would relate an experience or story on said topic. Cindy would then recount the story, experience or tale in first person narrative.

We had a real problem with that, as Cindy could not be reliably counted on to tell the story with the same beginning, middle, ending and moral, as the originator of the wisdom would expect.

After two months of wrangling and with Cindy constantly threatening to quit, we agreed to write the story in the first person plural. We wanted the story to come from our most wise group as a collective and unified voice.

This meant, of course, that we all had to agree on choice of the various stories, method of narration and moral to be imparted. This particular process took another eighteen months.

Finally, and after three months of heated negotiations, we came up with a definition of garden. We defined a garden as any ecosystem with human occupants. All plants and animals within the ecosystem are counted as being part of the garden. The garden would now include, in addition to the humans, all animals, bugs, birds and household pets within the ecosystem.

Cindy threw up those arms in disgust and said why didn’t we call the book Everything You Need to Know About Being a Woman Can Be Learned in Your Own -Ecosystem-?

Actually, we all agreed with Cindy and said to go ahead and change the name. Cindy demurred. She thought Garden a better word in terms of public recognition.

Read on, women of America. Within these covers you will discover the secrets of everything from how to live with pimples to dealing with middle-age bladder leak. You will be privy to the love secrets of those far more experienced than Dr. Sisters. You will even, dear reader, be given excellent tips on how to dress for work or for a date.

We know you will especially like the chapter titled Men are Blue Jays; Woman Are Cardinals.

Our treasurer, winsome Melanie, has computed the sum total of our female experience. While some would not reveal their age, with shrewd estimation we can safely state that this book contains the combined wisdom of 1,070 years of being female! Almost as much the esteemed Dr. Wizenheimer!

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Chapter 1

The Hillery Beach Garden Club

T here were many late night discussions as to the wisdom of including this chapter on our little book of wisdom. The opponents said we were, taken as a group, too boring. The proponents argued that that was exactly the point.

In the analysis we realized that it was the opponents who thought the proponents were the boring ones and the proponents had to formulate some sort of defense. Using this logic, we decided to include the chapter.

Hillery Beach is a quiet community tucked into a small cove off the Chesapeake Bay. The development has over 700 homes, about 50 of which actually sit adjacent to the water.

Even so, the homeowners of Hillery Beach, all 700 of them, fight any waterfront legislation with the fervor of down-payments and settlement fees.

The rosters of the Hillery Beach Garden Club include members with an early 1967 membership date. Even though such folks regularly remit their annual dues of $50.00, none of us has actually seen any of these members in the flesh. For most, membership began in the late 1980’s and attendance at the weekly meetings has been more or less regular. Thus, the active members of the club are well introduced.

Sometime in the early 1990’s, the HBGC changed the club focus from snapdragons to butterfly gardens; from staked and pesticide-filled tomatoes to sprawling vines covered with Japanese Beetles. The pendulum had swung from the structured and classic gardens of the Jekylls to the leisurely meadows of the birds, bees and beetles. The HBGC followed the national trend, and began to veer the organic and composted course that the horticulturists encouraged.

Bird watchers soon joined the HBGC, and distributed pamphlets on attracting birds to the gardens.

Soon the Tuesday night meetings were joined by all manner of folk and not necessarily those who could tell a tuberous from a fibrous begonia. The living rooms of the meeting sponsor would echo with the laughter of men seeking hummingbirds and senior widow ladies craving one evening enveloped by human sounds. The HBGC rosters grew so large that the meeting site was changed to the conference room of a local library.

For a two year period in the early 1990’s, the HBGC was a happening place. The meetings, at one point, became quasi-resident association meetings; far more community problems were solved at the informal garden meetings then in the structured resident meetings.

When the novelty of the garden-ecosystem concept wore off, attendance at the weekly meetings declined. Membership renewals were not returned. Over a two and one half year period, the make-up of the club changed from community social club to coffee klasch for sufferers of hot flashes.

Not that membership of the opposite sex is in any way excluded. Indeed, three of our most knowledgeable members are of the male persuasion and each lectures annually on their garden specialties. One quiet, pudgy male member is an expert at pollinating daylilies. Every year, the menopausal active members of the club gather at the gardens of the bloom-a-day-bulb expert. For two hours, our daylily sperminator demonstrates the delicacy needed to place pollen from the red stamen around the piston of the yellow one.

Cindy swears that the guy is perverted because he tends to stroke the piston for what she feels is an abnormally long time. We allow that Cindy is paranoid as the daylily expert rarely spends more than fifteen minutes stroking each piston.

Some of our occasionally active members are senior citizen ladies who are welcomed with most open arms. We find these ladies excellent purveyors of garden lore and find ourselves better gardeners for their presence. Were it not for the ones who insist that all the national parks are being taken over by the UN, we would encourage more such knowledgeable ladies to join.

No mind the unforbidden male attendees or the senior ladies who beguile us with UN terrorist tales; the physical makeup of the more active members is solidly mid to late forties; healthy, hearty and hale.

Most of the group are perceived to be intelligent, take-charge types of women. The occupations of the group include school teachers, accountants, school bus drivers and bank tellers. All of the core group have children, most of adolescent age or older.

We encouraged all of our members, male and female, to contribute to the book. Indeed, many did. There became a need to edit the contributions that told of the joy of stroking pistons or the solution to UN absconders of our national parks. With all the fighting amongst our own core selves, we had to cope with the anger of those who waxed eloquently on piston-stroking and were cut but not pasted.

But we have collectively accepted the responsibility of the grave task of this book and do not wish to be in any way held accountable for