SGAFO – Qualifications for the inner circle

Dear Inner Circle of SGAFO,

On this occasion of my tenth anniversary as a member of the Society of Gardeners Aged Fifty and Over,  I humbly submit my qualifications to be admitted to the Inner Circle of Gardeners Aged Sixty and Over (ICGASO).

In no particular order…

– I still garden.

– I think of garden as both a noun and a verb.

– I have had a vegetable garden every year for the past ten years, maintaining a streak of growing vegetables every year since 1987.  I absolutely will plant a vegetable garden again this year, beginning on March 17 when I will sow peas.

– I have written several books on gardening.  Affiliate links are on the sidebar if you wish to see the evidence.
  Potted and Pruned: Living a Gardening Life (2017)
  Homegrown and Handpicked: A Year in a Gardening Life (2018)
  The Christmas Cottontail: A Story for Gardeners of All Ages (2018)

– I will be publishing a third book of humorous and light-hearted essays in a few weeks, completing my trilogy of gardening humor books. I titled the third book Seeded and Sodded: Thoughts from a Gardening Life (2019)

– I have the audacity to think, to believe, to know that the world needs a trilogy of humorous gardening books.

– I have spread the good news of gardening as a gardenangelist through numerous speaking engagements, including one all the way down in Florida, proving that gardening is universal as is the humor of gardening. It doesn’t matter what climate you garden is in, if you meet a gardener from another climate, you can still converse with one another about, well, gardening.

– In addition, I have begun a podcast, The Gardenangelists, with Dee Nash of Red Dirt Ramblings so gardeners everywhere can listen to us talk about gardening, even while they are gardening.  See above about gardening being universal.

– I still have more gardening hoes than anyone else I know. No one has ever challenged my claim to have the World’s Largest Hoe Collection.

– My garden has been transformed over the last ten years with taller trees, a better garden design, and countless new plants added and removed, added and removed, added and removed, ad infinitum.  And yes, I still dig most of the planting holes myself.

– I can still wear, and still do wear, some of the same gardening clothes I had when I first joined this esteemed society, though I have had to replace some of my gardening clogs because I wore them out. However, I kept the worn out clogs and now plant violas in them in the spring and succulents in them in the summertime.

But perhaps my most important qualification to be admitted to the Inner Circle of Gardeners Aged Sixty and Over is…

 I am now 60 years old.

Humbly submitted,

Carol, May Dreams Gardens