It has become a common theme over the last three weeks that the lack of precipitation for our area is starting show on many plants and tree do to drought stress. Bob Coward, the co-host of the Garden Show on WBCK, talked about how the drought monitor for Michigan may not be entirely correct. While working on several projects over the past week, Bob said that the soil is almost a thin dust there needs to be a large turnaround to avoid severe drought conditions. If you see the map below from the U.S. Drought Monitor, the only improvement from moderate to abnormal drought (brown to yellow) were in areas that saw precipitation over the past week - the Northern Lower Peninsula and the southern border counties of Hillsdale, Lenawee and Monroe in the Southeast region. On top of that, the Battle Creek area has received just .41 inches of rain (not even a half-inch) through May 16