Cross Quarter Club: Mid-Spring Gathering Recap
In 2022, I started a seasonal living club for women here in York, Pennsylvania. We gather together four times per year: at midwinter, mid-spring, midsummer and mid-autumn, to work on a project that connects us to earth and season. Each gathering is an invitation to pause and deepen into the season we’re in, try your hand at something new and come together with other like-minded folks. I’ve been longing for this type of community, so I decided to create it myself!
Our second gathering was held on Sunday, May 1st at a beautiful park in Yoe, Pennsylvania. We had the best afternoon filled with locally grown flowers, good conversation, hot tea, honey cake and the sound of rain on a tin roof. It was the perfect celebration of spring. Read on for the full recap!
Floral arranging workshop
We celebrated May Day and got excited for all the blossoms and blooms ahead by making our own handcrafted floral arrangements. Attendees brought their favorite vase and I provided the rest! The majority of the flowers were grown locally by Sharon Debeaumont from Little Farm Flowers East with a couple buckets of stems cut from my own garden that morning. We had a beautiful mix of unique double tulips, many varieties of daffodils, white dogwood branches, and mixed greenery to work with. I’ll shared some tips and tricks and then we got to designing!
Here are some of the flower arrangements we made at the mid-spring gathering of my Cross Quarter Club! Each bouquet is as beautiful and unique as the woman who made it!
Seedling swap
Along with a creative project, each Cross Quarter Club gathering also has a sharing activity. My mission isn’t just about making pretty things (although that’s a lovely and important part!), it’s about building a community. And I’m learning that strong, sustainable communities are built on a foundation of reciprocity. At the mid-spring gathering, we shared plants & seedlings. I love the idea that an offshoot from my garden will get to continue its life in someone else’s. And these four packs of herbs & veggies that have been growing together since they were still seeds were divided and will be planted in 4 different gardens, connecting us all even further. Plants are medicine, and so is sisterhood.
Everyone who came to the Mid-spring gathering went home with their own floral arrangement, a pair of steel floral shears, and a seedling two to plant in their garden. There was enough flowers leftover that everyone also took a small wrapped bouquet to gift to a friend!
After we finished our arrangements, we fired up the kettles to enjoy some hot tea along with the honey cake and wild violet custard I created for the spring Midseason Journal. It was a beautiful way to end our time together — with good conversation, over tasty treats and the sound of gentle spring rain on a tin roof.
Does this sound like your kind of club?
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