I absolutely love Azaleas! I have three pink ones in a bed in my back garden. I have two white ones in the rear corner of my garden. These are all about 20 years old. This spring I planted four more in my shade garden: two white, one scarlet red, and one magenta colored. Next year I plan to plant two more in the front flower bed, two on the south side of the garden, and one in a new flower bed I'll build next year in the corner between the end of my driveway and the sidewalk. I've never been one to keep track of the names of the plants I buy until I joined the NGA. I guess you might say I'm becoming a proper gardener now. Let me show you some pictures from this spring of my established Azaleas.

Those are beautiful!

Thank you Tiffany.

Good morning! Beautiful day here! Watered everything in my garden. Also found out I had to deep water my Azaleas. So I just took the nozzle off the hose, slowed the flow way down, and just put the end of the hose by the base of each Azalea for about an hour each.

One if my new Azaleas looked like it was dying, and I had to try something. When I dug up another plant in another part of my garden I noticed that the ground in that area was dry below about 4 inches. I was surprised! That's what caused me to think the same thing might be happening to the Azalea.

So after two days of deep watering all four new Azaleas (Sunday and Yesterday), the one that looked like it was dying, is showing signs of reviving, sprouting little new leaves. Whew! That was close!

Wonderful! I guess you have not been getting daily rain like we have been down here, every day for a while now. I'm going to be pulling weeds all morning Saturday.

We've only had two days of measurable rain all month! For Virginia that's really dry! Right where I live, even Elsa didn't give us much in the way of rain. June wasn't much better! And this is the year I had to decide to plant a whole bunch of new stuff! I've had to really give my new garden a whole lot of TLC!

That's frustrating! Wish the rain could spread more evenly. The past few summers, there was awful drought here but not this year. I lost a lot of plants in the drought because I just didn't have time to keep dragging the hose around and watering everything.

I understand! I am semi-retired so my gardening this year has kept me sane and kept my blood pressure under control. Not trying to get into politics, but after January 20th I shut off the news...all of it! I don't watch the national or local news anymore. All it did was make me angry. I couldn't do anything about any of it anyway. So I've spent most of my days in the garden, building planting beds, planting, and of course dragging my newly purchased garden hose around the yard to keep everything hydrated. For years I used to be a news junkie! I watched the news for hours and hours! I would talk about politics and current events. But not any more! I couldn't believe what we lived through in 2020 and on in to 2021! I need my garden to keep me busy and sane! My wife actually talks politics and current events more than I do now. So dragging my garden hose around to water my plants, and then seeing how they react to the water makes me happy! Calm! Sane!

I am so glad you are doing what makes you feel calm and happy. : ) Agree, it's not appropriate to discuss politics here. I'm semi-retired too ... but only in the evenings & on weekends. Does that count? LOL! Probably not.