Dear Reader:

Thanks to Mother Nature, recently, the Lowcountry is pulling out of the near-drought conditions it was headed for just a week prior…

I had bought another water can to help me with my side garden since there is no workable faucet on that side of the house. And as much as it forced me to run back and forth filling up water cans… today that side is the most beautiful.

There are two reasons for this…location, location, location and 1:1 attention from me. The garden gets only dappled light from the trees that tower over it and each day before the rains finally arrived-I would talk to the plants while I watered each one and ” dead-head” the withered blooms to make room for new blooms.

Just that little extra attention has made all the difference. Because I have an automated sprinkler that comes on each morning my presence wasn’t as essential in the back yard garden.

The flowers didn’t get my presence as much and extra gardening attention-so several plants have withered from lack of acute observation.

However the plants on the outskirts of the garden needed my water hose since the sprinkler didn’t reach them and they too thrived better than the automated sprinkler plants . I would check on them to make sure the hose water got to them… and pull weeds from around them or clip off dead or decaying stems.

All living creatures thrive better when special attention is diverted to them. This is an example of another lesson I learned from teaching. Most behavioral problem students just wanted attention-just wanted to be seen and heard. Acting out improved with just some 1:1 attention from the teacher and certain other students selected to be a buddy to a challenged learner or troubled teen.

So until tomorrow … don’t you think our Master Gardener does this for us and even more importantly smiles when we take the watering can to help someone else using 1:1 techniques to make them feel seen, heard, and cared for by God’s water cans- us!

” Today is my favorite day” Winnie the Pooh

I always find it fascinating that blue or pink hydrangeas depend on the amount of PH acidity or alkaline in the soil. Apparently I have both in my garden!