Hooray! Hooray! It's the First of May

Outdoor fucking begins today! (Shame on me!)

But my dears, you can't deny it, there is some amazing outdoor fucking going on out there beginning around the First of May. I had a botany professor in college, who taught with relish the way that the flowers of spring dressed up to attract their suitors, the pollinators. Just look at the way the azalea flaunts herself in her flashy pink dress. Her antlers begging with that come hither look.

My brother and I hold this long-standing tradition. It dates back to the days when we held down minimum wage jobs in a shopping plaza on the Outer Banks. There in the dunes amongst the sea grasses, lovers lurked and well, if it happened to be the first of May, why what else could we say? So on the First, we race to be the First to scream it into the phone at each other. My colleagues at work, by necessity, are well familiar with the ritual. Some have even tried to get in on the deal. But alas, with the date falling on Saturday this year, they'll miss out. (Chip, First of May! First of May! Outdoor Fucking Begins today! Do I win?)

Searching for enlightenment, I though I'd Google that licentious lyric and find some cultural or historical significance. But rather my cheeks are still blushing at the nasty material that lined up on my search page. So I abandoned that effort and began to think about Garden Porn instead.

Garden Porn is what comes in those gorgeous glossy magazines that leer at me from the newsstand. I am a hopeless sucker for them and almost always grab Fine Gardening and happily shell out the outrageous $7 cover price. And then at the end of the day, when every brain cell is kaput and when Smithsonian, The New Yorker or even Time magazine presents too much of a challenge, that's when I grab my porn. I peruse the monthly rewrite in Organic Gardening, of how to compost, the compelling story of how Miss Flowers of Anytown, USA, ditched her grassy lawn and turned her whole front yard into a fetching display of seasonal blooms. There's always a nod to the water-challenged folks of the west coast and how succulents and rocks can be landscaped in glorious repose. And then there's those lucky southeastern gardens where the bells of the south create luscious Colonial-era edible gardens and ooze Charleston charm. I dream about winning the container garden challenge and study the swell way that others have managed to cram such variety of unique plants into a beautiful urn (my selections always seem to fight with each and then die off when the summer grows too hot). And with a mind full of seductive and sexy gardening successes, I drift off to sleep. The Putterer