Spring garden party at Lucinda’s purple casita
April 14, 2022 If I’m lucky, springtime means an invitation to Lucinda Hutson‘s festive garden. And last weekend I felt lucky indeed to be invited to her purple casita on a perfect spring day. Out front, pansies were still somehow hanging on, despite recent warm temperatures. Ready to take over, ...
Houston Botanic Garden edibles, water wall, and end-of-winter gardens
April 04, 2022 In early March, on a quick trip to Houston, I returned to Houston Botanic Garden for an end-of-winter visit. HBG is still a new garden — it opened in September 2020; click for my visit — and the culinary garden with its massive, aqua-tiled water wall is ...
The yellow glow of late fall
December 02, 2021 Cool, blue-sky weather has me spending more time in the garden, having friends over, and tinkering with planting beds. It’s kind of glowing out there. Why? Yellow is the color of fall in my garden, starting with the wonderful forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis), which lights up the ...
Lucinda Hutson’s colorful Day of the Dead garden
October 25, 2021 Austin author Lucinda Hutson‘s garden blazes with color every day of the year. But come October, for Day of the Dead, she kicks it up a big notch. Yellow and orange marigolds glow from every pot, mingling with hibiscus, coral vine, and roses in sherbet hues, all ...
A week of bloom spikes and rain
May 22, 2021 We had such prolonged rain this week that I lost track of how many inches it came to — 4 inches for sure if not 5. The garden responded to the extra water and mild May temps with a profusion of growth, including bloom spikes on yuccas, ...
Still cleaning up after the freeze but making progress
March 16, 2021 In the 3 weeks since the Big Freeze, there’s been much gnashing of teeth and grim side-eye given to the cold-toasted garden. There’s been escape. But mostly there’s been a slow acceptance of the changed garden and daily efforts at cutting it all back, removing plants that ...
Japanese maple puts on another excellent show
December 17, 2020 The show is over now, but during the past two weeks I watched the Japanese maple at the front corner of the house blush redder and redder. Looking up through the leaves was like gazing through stained glass. I’m sure I looked odd staring up at the ...
David’s top 10 plants in our garden
August 31, 2020 First Tamara’s husband, David, guest-posted about his favorite flowers on his wife’s blog Chickadee Gardens. Then Loree at Danger Garden interviewed her non-gardening husband, Andrew, about his top ten favorite plants (not limited to flowers since her garden is foliage-centric), and included his haiku-like descriptions of each ...
Late summer stars of the garden
August 26, 2020 Like a starfish clinging to a rock, this soap aloe (Aloe maculata) I stuck in a pie-pan planter has grown more beautifully than I expected. It seems to love the crevice life. Snaking stems of ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) add their flower shapes to the composition. A ...
Midsummer garden walkabout
August 08, 2020 Whale’s tongue agave (Agave ovatifolia) Midsummer has never been my favorite season in the garden. It’s hot and humid. Mosquitoes are fierce. And yet this summer, perhaps because I’m spending more time at home and in my own garden than usual, I’m also appreciating it more. Here’s ...
Penstemon and passionflower
April 09, 2020 Spring bounds ahead as we confine ourselves at home, waiting for the corona specter to pass us by. I spent an unproductive couple of hours late last night googling how to cut my own hair and watching makeup tutorials promising to make me look 10 years younger ...
All cleaned up after live oak deluge
March 30, 2020 The garden reemerged last weekend, after copious raking and blowing and bagging, from the annual spring deluge of last season’s live oak leaves and subsequent pollen catkins. I ran around with the camera, capturing the gorgeousness of new flowers and fresh foliage, like this pretty combo of ...
Mexico City: Coyoacán coyotes, parks, and mole
March 24, 2020 After touring the Frida Kahlo Museum, we walked around Coyoacán, one of Mexico City’s charming historic neighborhoods with sherbet-colored buildings, bustling plazas, green parks, a food and souvenir market, and coyotes everywhere. No, not real ones. “Coyoacán” means “place of coyotes” in the Aztec language Nahuatl. Two ...
Springtime garden glow
March 07, 2020 Responding to warm temps and a good rain this week, the garden is awash with new growth and pockets of spring color, like glowing yellow bulbine. Mild winter temps didn’t kill it back, and now each bloom spike is a yellow sunbeam. The coral-red flowers of ‘Blue ...
Fall xeriscape garden at Rollingwood City Hall
November 25, 2019 ‘Strawberry Fields’ gomphrena blazes with color amid bold agaves and barrel cactus. While driving through West Austin on the Open Day garden tour earlier this month, I had a sixth-sense feeling that a garden was calling my name. Oh yes, I thought, remember the xeriscape garden at ...
Day of the Dead at Lucinda Hutson’s casita and garden
November 04, 2019 In early November each year, Austin writer Lucinda Hutson celebrates Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday for remembering and honoring deceased loved ones. Decorating her Rosedale home — her purple casita, as she calls it — and Mexican-style garden with colorful flowers, food, tequila bottles, skeleton ...
