As a woman with a dirty mind who publishes a garden writing magazine and, now, a book of delightfully dirty garden stories, it was only natural that one day I’d make a list of naughty things to say in the garden.
This list was inspired by a morning of work out in the community garden last summer, with my adult daughter Zora. I complained that my hands were sore from hoein’ and as soon as I said it we both started giggling. Soon we were coming up with other comments that could be misconstrued . . .
—Sandra Knauf
Naughty Things to Say in the Garden
I’m tired from hoein’ all day!
Mmm. I’d like to spread my seed all over her bed.
I was happy that she wet my bed.
Perhaps next season we can share a bed?
You should taste my tomatoes . . . peppers . . . cucumber . . . .
I would love to share my seed.
Mmm . . . that cucumber looks good!
Mmm . . . those melons . . . I bet they are delicious.
This one’s firm.
This one’s ready.
Did you know (asparagus, chili peppers, basil, arugula ) (is/are) (a/an) aphrodisiac/s?
I don’t mind getting dirty (or wet, or sweaty) in the garden. I like it.
Excerpt from Fifty Shades of Green, “Seed”
For another taste of the garden, here’s an excerpt from one of our stories, Michael Bracken’s “Seed.”
The next time I saw the woman dancing naked in the garden I was prepared. I made several sketches of her that night and hung them in my studio. The following morning, a Saturday when most of my neighbors gathered to garden and gossip, I passed around a sketch of just her face. No one recognized the woman and I returned home to work on the cover of an urban fantasy about werewolves in Wichita.
That afternoon, when I took a break from my work, Henry joined me on the porch. I showed him all of my sketches of the naked dancer. “You know her?”
Just as the other neighbors had denied knowing the woman, he too denied knowing her, but after he stared at the sketches a bit longer, he looked at me. “She dances in the garden?”
I told him she did.
“And you’re the only one who sees her?”
“Seems that way.”
He cocked his head to the side and stared at me for so long I thought he’d drifted away. “She’s chosen you.”
He wouldn’t answer any more of my questions and I finally stopped asking. Whatever Henry thought he knew he wasn’t prepared to share.
I sat up late every night after that, propped up on the window seat in my bedroom where I could watch the community garden from the second floor. When the dancing woman finally returned, I slipped out of my house wearing only cut-offs and a T-shirt, and I crossed the yard to the garden. When the naked woman saw me standing at one end of the central path, she stopped dancing.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Why are you here?”
She touched her finger to her lips, silencing me. She stepped lightly down the path until she stood less than a foot from me. She took my hand, lifted it to her lips, and kissed my palm. Then she placed my hand on her breast, the damp spot in the center of my palm pressing against her tightening nipple. Her full breast was soft yet firm, and I reached out to take her other breast in my other hand.
She wrapped her hands around the back of my neck and pulled me close enough to cover my lips with hers and slip her tongue into my mouth. She tasted of cucumbers and tomatoes and bell peppers and sweet onions.
—Michael Bracken
Blurb and buy links
Fifty Shades of Green is a garden of naughty delights!
Within our pages you’ll discover:
– Virile gods and their mortal conquests.
– A community garden’s secret (and very dirty) fertility ritual.
– An Edwardian dominatrix living out her sadistic garden fantasies.
– Student/teacher lessons in horticultural hotness.
– Young lovers seeking the help of green witches.
– A beautiful, blind priest who helps an injured traveler.
. . . and so much more.
Peek inside the garden gate.
(You know you want to.)
A dozen racy tales await.
Fifty Shades of Green is a collection of twelve delicious and erotic short stories with gardening themes. What you’ll find in these pages is hotter than the hottest pepper on the Scoville index of heat! And smart, not smutty. Well . . . maybe a little smutty.
To Buy Fifty Shades of Green (it’s on sale, just for you):
Publisher Bio
Sandra Knauf has been a featured “Colorado Voices” columnist for The Denver Post and her humorous essays have appeared nationally in GreenPrints, an Utne Reader award-nominated garden writing journal. She has also been a guest commentator on KRCC’s (a NPR affiliate station) “Western Skies” radio show. In addition to Fifty Shades of Green, her publishing company has published six volumes of the garden writing journal Greenwoman, a young adult fantasy/sci-fi novel, Zera and the Green Man, and other works.
Author Bio
Michael Bracken is the managing editor of a bi-monthly gardening magazine, the editor of a weekly gardening e-newsletter, and the author of erotic stories published in anthologies such as Cowboy Heat, Cowboy Lust, Flesh and Blood: Guilty as Sin, Hot Blood: Strange Bedfellows, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica, The Mammoth Book of Erotic Confessions, and many other publications. He lives and writes in Texas.
Michael Bracken’s Website
FREE Sample Stories!
To sample two free stories from Fifty Shades of Green visit our Garden Shorts website.
If you sign up for our newsletter you will be sent “Seed” (our sexy story about a community garden’s secret fertility ritual).
To read “Phallus Impudicus,” (a tale about the horny god Pan’s visit with a lonely gardener) just click on the Fifty Shades SAMPLE! tab
Thanks so much for hosting us on this tour! I made one small error on the post–the link to the Amazon.co.uk should be http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fifty-Shades-Green-Cheri-Colburn/dp/0990538508/
Best to you and your readers,
Sandra Knauf