Autumn turns New Hampshire’s White Mountains orange, crimson, and gold
November 08, 2021 New England’s fall color — with trees flaming out orange, red, and gold — is famous worldwide. Two years ago I started planning a bucket-list trip to see it and settled on the White Mountains of New Hampshire in early October. Covid bumped the trip back a ...
Maroon Bells hike through Colorado wildflowers
August 03, 2021 Texans flock to Colorado to escape summer’s heat, and we’ve made our share of road trips up through Boulder, Estes Park, Breckenridge, and Durango. But somehow we’d never been to Aspen. We remedied that oversight in mid-July, when the alpine meadows were quilted by colorful wildflowers. A ...
Polynesian Austin weekend vibes
July 18, 2021 A summer evening visit to Hula Hut netted us with zero tubular tacos or pu pu platters, due to an unexpected early closure. But it did provide beautiful, tropicalesque views of Pride of Barbados flowers and palm trees releafing after the February freeze. And we had sunset ...
Seiwa-en, a serene Japanese strolling garden: Missouri Botanical Garden, part 3
June 25, 2021 A week ago I road-tripped to St. Louis to visit Missouri Botanical Garden. At its far end I found the acclaimed Japanese Garden Seiwa-en, a 14-acre strolling garden built around a curving lake, with naturalistic but carefully composed views. Quite the contrast with the colorful, geometric, and ...
Origami sculpture and Christmasy cactus garden at San Antonio Botanical Garden
December 07, 2020 I first admired Kevin Box‘s playful origami sculptures on Canyon Road in Santa Fe. Now he’s exhibiting his work at San Antonio Botanical Garden through early May 2021. I kept wanting to visit this fall but couldn’t find time until last weekend, when my husband and I ...
Earthshaking thrills at Yosemite’s Half Dome
July 17, 2020 Half Dome as seen from Cook’s Meadow On Day 2 of our June Yosemite visit (click here for part 1 and here for how we pulled off the trip), we rose well before dawn, drove the 40 minutes into the park, and dropped David off at the ...
Graffiti plant
January 22, 2020 Last weekend I spotted this graffiti of a flowering yucca or palm on a bridge support at Lady Bird Lake. Sometimes you just need a plant where no plant can grow. __________________________ Digging Deeper Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks ...
Laid-back living at Lake Livingston
January 16, 2020 Is there any place more relaxing than a lakehouse? On the way to New Orleans last month, we spent two nights at my sister’s little place on Lake Livingston, about an hour north of Houston in East Texas. With feet propped up on the deck rail, I ...
November walk at Lady Bird Lake
November 06, 2019 A perfect fall day calls for a walk around Lady Bird Lake, so on Sunday there I was, at Lou Neff Point, viewing Austin’s mushrooming skyline and the towering Jenga building. Taking the U-turn trail around Barton Creek, I paused to admire the green spring water and ...
Bat watching in Austin
August 29, 2019 Nightwing by Dale Whistler at the south end of the Congress Avenue Bridge represents Texas’s official flying mammal and looks great with Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima). Austin goes extra batty in August, when the colony of Mexican free-tailed bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge swells with ...
Paperwhites and palmettos at Lady Bird Lake
January 09, 2019 A post-holiday hoof around Lady Bird Lake reveals some beautiful surprises, like a spring-fresh cluster of paperwhites in bloom. Inside the Pfluger Bridge Circle, designed by Christine Ten Eyck (my next Garden Spark speaker!)*… …I smiled to see this native palmetto playing a piano. What? Nah, it’s ...
Dog playtime at Red Bud Isle
December 18, 2018 Playing among cypress knees and gnarled roots at Red Bud Isle? Yep, it’s a dog’s life. Our good boy Cosmo enjoys off-leash playtime at Red Bud Isle in West Austin, cavorting at this beautiful point along Lady Bird Lake where a bald cypress clings to shore ...
Pennybacker Bridge overlook above Lake Austin
November 26, 2018 I’ve lived in Austin for 24 years and yet somehow, until recently, had never seen the city from its most famous overlook along Capital of Texas Highway on the north side of Lake Austin, where a limestone cliff offers a postcard-worthy view of iconic Pennybacker Bridge (aka ...
Deer, egrets, and aloes and a happy Thanksgiving to you
November 22, 2018 The buck stops here. And here and here and, well, everywhere in my neighborhood in autumn. On our daily stroll, the dog and I walk a gauntlet of edgy male deer standing vigil near groups of does. It’s rutting season, and bucks like this one are not ...
Kirk Walden’s Hill Country garden atop Lake Austin
May 25, 2018 With this killer view of Lake Austin, many homeowners might have sodded a lawn, plunked a few pots of annuals around the pool, and called it done. But Kirk Walden, whose garden was the final stop on the recent Austin Garden Bloggers Fling tour (I photographed it ...
Austin Garden Bloggers Fling kicks off today!
May 03, 2018 For two years now, my fellow bloggers Diana Kirby and Laura Wills and I have been planning a big event for garden bloggers called Garden Bloggers Fling. This weekend is when it finally happens — rain or shine! Garden Bloggers Fling is 3-1/2 days of private and ...
