The Grass is Green Where You Water It

I found myself in a lot of gardens this past month. Everything is so lush and beautiful in June as flowers bloom and vegetables come into season. My friend Charlotte was giving me a tour of hers, and I marveled at the bounty. As I was educated on lemon balm tea, it occurred to me that I hadn’t been home in about two weeks and the ferns on my back deck were most likely deceased after a week of “feels like” 107-degree weather.

The next morning, as I was jogging in Spanish Wells, I was again taking in the beauty of everyone’s front yards and gardens and thought, the grass is green where you water it. I know, super deep, right?

We all have the same number of hours in a day. What we set in motion when we decide to spend these hours is our priorities. You will rarely find an unsuccessful businessperson who devotes most of his waking hours to growing his business. Sure, market changes and unexpected events occur, but the secret to success is no secret at all. It’s just a lot of hard work, focus, and effort on what is important to you. Day, after day, after day. Get up and do it again.

This same effort carries over into families. I know there is an age-old debate on nature versus nurture, but generally speaking, where parents put in the time and effort on the front end, raising their kids to be good, kind, honest and caring individuals who will one day be respectable members of society, they mostly succeed.

I remember when I first brought my puppy Lucy home, I asked advice from everyone who had a well-behaved pooch. My friend Erik Olson advised that I take my new dog everywhere in the first year of her life—introducing her to different people, kids, other animals, loud noises, etc. This, of course, was not an easy task. Lucy was 100 pounds of wild Bernese Mountain Dog who didn’t know her own girth. But I did it, and the results were splendid. There never was a finer, more polite dog in all the land. My work paid off.

How are you spending your time? Is what you’re doing right now getting you to your goals? Summer is a good time to reset and think about what’s important to you and how your actions, habits, and thought processes can get you there. 

Wishing everyone a joyful July. Spend time watering the things you love.

M.Washo 

Publisher