This Saturday: “Don’t Be a Boob! Plant a Pot for Breast Cancer!”

       Flowers. You can’t go wrong with flowers.

       Often we confuse the phrase “sensual pleasures” with sexual ones, but sensual really just means something pleasing to the senses, and the vibrating color and voluptuous scent of an abundant flower garden can send the same pulse of pleasure through most people as that perfect bite of cherry pie, a cold beer on a hot day or that just-right smooch on the cheek from someone you love. Pleasure doesn’t always have to be lascivious and it certainly doesn't have to be  complicated.

       That’s why I was so pleased to hear that Palmer's Garden Center (2610 Corrine Drive, Orlando, FL, 407-896-5951) is putting on a fundraiser THIS SATURDAY, AUGUST 22, called “Don’t Be a Boob! Plant a Pot for Breast Cancer!” All day, from 9-5, Palmer’s will be donating a percent of sales to the MD Anderson Cancer Center with “wine and lite bites” from 3-5pm in honor of their manager, recently diagnosed with breast cancer. So come do something for yourself, your home and a good cause a service by beautifying your environment with daisies, tomatoes, mint plants…whatever puts that twinkle in your eye.

       I thought it was such a great idea to have such an event in a garden center like Palmer’s, so alive with beautiful things and such an unusual locale for a fundraiser. In considering just what it is about gardens that send that buzz of happiness through the system I found a really nice piece originally on the environmental website Chelsea Green and here on Alternet , by Makenna Goodman who asks "Can Gardening Make Your Sex Life Better?" 

       It’s not dirty, just some well-considered musing on what pleasure really means, what good sex means to each of us invidually and how doing the thing we love – whether it’s gardening or drawing or dancing – is the most potent ingredient to happiness.

       And if you can't think of what makes you happy straight off, go with flowers.  You can’t go wrong with flowers.