Cool weather might make some people think of brown leaves and shriveling plants, but not me. October is, I think, the best garden season—both for planting and photographing—in central Texas. Certainly my streetside garden is fuller and more flowery than at any other time of year. The color and blissfully cool temperatures drew me outside last weekend, and I took a few more pictures of the gardens along the street.

Pictured above is a narrow garden shared by me and my neighbor Dell. It replaced a boring stretch of lawn that crisped up in the drought. Now we both enjoy orange-flowering globe mallow (Sphaeralcea), purple sage (Salvia officinalis), and ‘Color Guard’ yucca. Gulf muhly (Muhlenbergia capillaris) is in there too, and about to burst into pinkish purple bloom.

The frosty green leaves and tangerine flowers of globe mallow, a tough, drought-tolerant native of the southwestern U.S. Give it good drainage and full sun for best flowering.

On the other side of my house, I’m sharing gardening space with my neighbor Donna, and this is the view from her driveway, with the garden in full fall bloom.

There’s Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha) and an orange lantana…

…plus dwarf firebush (Hamelia patens var. glabra) and a few eryngium poking their thistly, purple heads up through the lantana.

‘Whale’s Tongue’ agave (A. ovatifolia) and Autumn sage (Salvia greggii): cool vs. hot color; bold vs. fine texture.

David Salman at High Country Gardens sent me a few plants to trial this spring, including ‘Summer Love’ agastache. I wrote him over the summer to tell him it wasn’t really thriving, but now that fall’s cooler temperatures (especially at night) have arrived, ‘Summer Love’ has perked up quite a bit. It’s only about a foot tall, but the rosy pink color is intense and showy, and I’m glad to see it looking so much happier.

A long view across Donna’s garden and my streetside garden reveals the tall, dusty pink, feathery blooms of ‘Pink Flamingos’ muhly grass.

Here’s another look, with the blue ridgeline of the surrounding hills visible between the trees. We’re surrounded by forested canyons in this neighborhood, which accounts for the heavy deer population. Everything in the front yard must be deer resistant, and of course grasses always fit the bill.

The curb strip in front of our house, with annual purple fountain grass (Pennisetum setaceum ‘Rubrum’) still showy but fading on the right, garlic chives (Allium tuberosum) gone to seed in front (I’m holding up the floppy heads with a hastily fashioned bamboo “fence”), Mexican feathergrass (Nassella tenuissima), and Autumn sage (Salvia greggii). Easy, readily available, and deer resistant plants.

The inflorescence of purple fountain grass is particularly beautiful, dark pink and as fuzzy as a wooly caterpillar.

A wider view

My husband made this swing for my daughter right after we moved into this house four years ago. Now that she’s older, she doesn’t swing so much, but I made the garden around it, and it’s a nice place to sit and rest and just look at the garden on a beautiful fall day.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

Each evening, two spotted fawns lounge or browse in my neighbors’ front lawns at the end of my street. Sometimes a slightly older fawn, still young enough to be spotted, joins them. Their mother leaves them to go browsing for dinner among neighborhood shrubs, and the fawns are quite brave about passing pedestrians. Cosmo, our new 4-year-old, poodle-mix rescue dog, they’re not so sure about.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.

My family and I recently enjoyed a nearly two-week vacation in Colorado, and I’d love to share some photos from Rocky Mountain National Park, a favorite destination for this Texan looking to escape the heat for a little while. Bear Lake Trail is an easy hike around a small, nearly circular mountain lake on the east side of the park. Although the trail is heavily used by visitors, I still find a slow meander around the lake to be a restorative experience.

We’ve walked around Bear Lake many times before, on sunnier days. But this time rain clouds had socked in the lake, making for a dreamy, contemplative hike.

On this still day, the glassy surface reflected a mirror image of the surrounding firs, pines, and mountain ridges.

Although the pine bark beetle has killed off many thousands of evergreens in the park, Bear Lake is still relatively untouched, although we did see stands of dead trees here and there. All part of the natural process, we were told, though it’s still sad to see entire mountainsides of bare trunks and fallen trees.

Shapely, white-trunked aspens are a favorite of mine. Walking through a grove of them, with their fluttering leaves overhead, is almost a transcendent experience.

We saw some cute critters, including this bold golden-mantled ground squirrel…

…and lots of birds, including this small nesting female, who flitted into a crevice under a rock shelf, right in front of our eyes, where she settled on her nest of peeping chicks, which we could only hear, not see.

She was quite safe from predators there, as the rock face was steep, and her nest situated under a overhanging ledge.

I don’t know what this satiny gray-trunked tree is, but its bark was very beautiful.

I spotted a number of wildflowers along the trail as well. though I don’t have IDs for any of them. This is a groundsel…

…and this is cow parsnip (thanks for the IDs, Tina).

Beautiful texture amid the ferny undergrowth

We also drove Trail Ridge Road, which takes you seemingly to the top of the world at 12,183 feet elevation. We took a short walking path through the tundra, admiring alpine plants that eke out a living up here, with a growing season of only about 40 days.

It’s easy to get altitude sickness at this elevation, if you’re not careful. That happened to me one year, when we walked the trail on an intensely sunny day. As I got back in the car, a stabbing headache, sensitivity to light, and severe nausea set in, and all I could do was close my eyes and slump against the window until we got back down to our cabin in Estes Park at 7,500 feet. Luckily, that didn’t happen this year.

We were higher than some clouds.

Later we spotted this elk on the side of the road, and I snapped a few photos through the windshield.

Majestic, no?

In one of the valleys, a sighting of a female moose having lunch in a marshy area stopped traffic on the park road, as several of us pulled over to have a look through binoculars and telephoto lenses. Wildlife sightings are one of the highlights of a visit to Rocky Mountain National Park, along with beautiful scenery and mountaintop vistas.

All material © 2006-2012 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.