Grizzlies and geysers at Yellowstone, part 1
August 13, 2023 As we drove toward the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park, I twisted my telephoto lens onto my Nikon and held the camera in my lap. Twenty-three years earlier, on a late afternoon drive in Yellowstone, we’d seen a grizzly sow and twin cubs dash across the ...
Marfa love affair
August 05, 2023 Last week I made my first real visit to Marfa, the tiny (population 1,750) and improbable art mecca in far West Texas. I’d passed through Marfa once before, at the tail end of a spring break trip to drought-bleached Big Bend with small children, and I confess ...
Hoodoo wonderland at Bryce Canyon National Park
June 25, 2023 On our spring RV trip through western national parks, we visited Bryce Canyon, a strange landscape of sculpted-pillar hoodoos. Located in southern Utah, Bryce sits high in the sky, averaging 8,000 feet in elevation. Snowbanks stood head high along some of the overlook paths during our late ...
A friend’s new garden takes shape in San Antonio
June 09, 2023 My friend Jean McWeeney, an enthusiastic gardener, birder, and naturalist, relocated to San Antonio last year from Houston, and before that from Louisiana. She left behind an established garden in Louisiana and a temporary one in Houston, and now she’s making a new garden in the drier ...
Thirsty cedar waxwings come in for a drink
January 31, 2023 I moved my fountain to the edge of the covered patio this winter, to free myself from the near-daily task of cleaning out crape myrtle litter during the summer. Another upside is that now I can watch birds at the fountain from my office window. A few ...
Pond of the Blue Moon and bird- and gator-watching at Shangri La Botanical Gardens
December 16, 2022 Yesterday I introduced you to Shangri La Botanical Gardens & Nature Center, which sits along a bayou in Orange, Texas, right at the Louisiana border, and I shared a tour of the inner gardens. Today I’ll complete the tour starting at the back of the 250-acre property, ...
Shangri La Botanical Gardens, a garden fairy tale
December 15, 2022 Dancing Sisters bottle tree sculpture at Shangri La Sleeping Beauty has nothing on Shangri La Botanical Gardens & Nature Center. Located in the small town of Orange, Texas, just across the Sabine River from Louisiana, Shangri La’s very existence is in some ways as fantastical as the ...
Bewitching bonsai, art, and autumn gardens at North Carolina Arboretum
November 30, 2022 Located in Asheville on the doorstep of the Blue Ridge Parkway, with views of the Southern Appalachian Mountains, the North Carolina Arboretum draws hikers, mountain bikers, and trail walkers thanks to 10 miles of wooded, hilly, dog-friendly trails. But garden lovers like myself find plenty to enjoy ...
Golden trees and black bears in Great Smoky Mountains and Cades Cove
November 28, 2022 On Halloween, we sought the warm colors of autumn — pumpkin orange, harvest gold, bonfire red — along the Blue Ridge Parkway and in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which straddles the North Carolina-Tennessee border. And we found them too, despite the lateness of the leaf-peeping season, ...
Beautiful flora and fauna at Santa Fe Botanical Garden
September 19, 2022 During our stay in Santa Fe at the end of August, I spent one morning at Santa Fe Botanical Garden. I first visited in 2016, three years after it opened and right before the opening of Phase 2, Ojos y Manos: Eyes and Hands. My 6-year absence ...
Explosion of oxblood lilies and datura
September 07, 2022 I vamoosed from the Texas heat last week for the drier, cooler, high-desert climate of Santa Fe. It was a great trip, but the whole time I was away I fretted that I was missing one of my late-summer favorites at home: the eruption of oxblood lilies ...
Meadow garden in gravel at Olbrich Botanical Gardens
August 18, 2022 A meadowy gravel garden at Olbrich I keep hearing about a new way of planting in gravel to make easy-care, low-weed, low-water gardens. The idea is, you scrape away 4-to-5 inches of soil, add a 6-inch-high barrier around the planting bed to contain the gravel at a ...
Ann Munson’s woodland garden invites mystery and play
August 05, 2022 Woodland gardens aren’t show ponies of dazzling flower color. Their beauty shines through in subtler, shade-loving foliage plants, in dappled light glinting through leaves, in cool shadowed paths that gradually reveal tucked-away art and secret hideaways. Such is the garden of Ann Munson, which I toured on ...
A sun-to-shade retreat in the garden of Rita Thomas
July 25, 2022 “The garden has been my retreat, my laboratory, and my playground,” Rita Thomas told us at the Madison Fling, a 3-day tour for gardeners on social media, held last month in and around Madison, Wisconsin. For 35 years, Rita has been playing in her Fitchburg garden, learning ...
Constellations of clematis at Janet Aaberg Garden
July 17, 2022 Glorious clematis vines greeted us at nearly every garden we visited during the Madison Fling last month, but Janet Aaberg’s garden stepped it up a notch. Thirty-two different varieties of these starry-flowered vines grow in her garden, and every one appeared to be in full bloom. This ...
Kicking off Madison Fling: People, badgers, barns, and a bountiful rooftop garden
July 04, 2022 Farm country scenery at the Flower Factory near Madison In late June I joined approximately 50 garden bloggers, Instagrammers, podcasters, and YouTubers in picturesque Madison, Wisconsin, for the 13th annual Garden Bloggers Fling. After a COVID hiatus of two years, and a heroic display of patience, stamina, ...
