Areas for Growth...

I imagine as Master Naturalists, we all have our strengths. I entered the class confident in my fair share of facts about spiders and alligators but I knew next to nothing about botany. After our very first session, I could have recalled with enthusiasm what we learned about the organ pipe mud dauber and the paralyzed red-femured spotted orbweavers inside their nests. But what I absorbed from the greenery amounted to “Pretty plant. Spikey plant. Twisty tree. Vine?” Attending to vegetation is a new practice for me.

I learned so much from our instructors and from our time with Judith Kramer, and my plant-enthusiast classmates continue to inspire me. Last weekend, my fellow graduate Amanda Kraft helped host the South Carolina Native Plant Society table at their Spring Native Plant Market. She reports that all of the vendors did very well and she ran into several folks from our Fall 2025 cohort.

With the help of fellow MN Lauren Kong-Preveaux, a gardener and landscape artist, I've started a small pollinator garden this spring. I would hover near Lauren during our rambles to pick up bits of botany knowledge casually dropped along the way. I was much too intimidated to tackle this project alone but I didn’t have to.

I confess I have already forgotten most of the species names of what we’ve planted but I have the list and I am practicing. And while plant identification doesn’t come naturally for me, an eastern tiger swallowtail has already come scouting the lobelia. That’s the kind of instant gratification that will keep me, with help, growing.