Dogs

January 29, 2019 The sky went pink last evening as a cold front blew through. In the owl box, a small screech owl watched me from his snug perch, safely out of the wind. The owl box hangs in a different spot in our back garden this winter. We recently ...

December 31, 2018 As you ring in the new year this evening, I am wishing you a happy year of gardening and garden visiting in 2019. May you have just enough rain, plenty of sunshine, and a garden of beautiful plants to enjoy! My gardening buddy Cosmo sends you his New ...

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 ...

July 19, 2018 It wouldn’t be an overstatement to say that my family and I traveled to England last month to see gardens. Particularly, romantic English gardens in the rosy flush of June. And specifically, three gardens I’ve longed to see for years: the famous estate gardens Sissinghurst and Great ...

March 02, 2018 ‘Sizzling Pink’ loropetalum is still sizzling in the lower garden and knocking my socks off every time I look at it. Yesterday the sun was lighting up those fuchsia blooms like a stained-glass window. The fringey flowers look like the pom-poms of a thousand cheerleaders. So colorful! ...

January 30, 2018 Central Texas gardens got walloped by Old Man Winter this year, and a lot of plants that normally contribute to Austin’s evergreen palette — bamboo muhly, sago palm, flax lily, even ‘Alphonse Karr’ bamboo — are sporting sad shades of tan or brown. With a garden tour ...

December 08, 2017 The flakes started hitting my windshield at 2:30 pm over in central-east Austin. By the time I got home I thought it was all over, but the heavy, gray sky and cold temps convinced me to start pulling pots of tender succulents up against the sheltering walls ...

August 23, 2017 Stepping through a dark-leaved doorway in a beech hedge into the display gardens at Digging Dog Nursery, located in Albion, California, you feel a bit like Alice falling into the rabbit hole. What awaits on the other side? A potted boxwood draws you through the hedge… …and ...

July 03, 2017 Much as I love my contemporary-naturalistic garden, and enjoyed puttering in my flowery cottage garden before that, my next garden — whenever and wherever that turns out to be — is going to be more like this one: smaller, with formal garden rooms laid out along axis ...

May 22, 2017 I’ve long admired designer B. Jane‘s contemporary-style gardens here in Austin, including one I wrote about for Austin Home last year. Last week I visited B.’s personal garden in Central Austin’s Brentwood neighborhood and fell hard for her lawn-free, block-planted front yard. A straight walk of Lueders ...

November 28, 2016 Autumn rarely sets our trees aflame here in central Texas, and this year’s fall color looks to be more of a dud than usual. But still, you can find a few russet tinges if you squint, especially in the coppery needles of bald cypresses around Lady Bird ...

November 21, 2016 Lake lounging. Wine sipping. Sunrise and sunset watching. That’s what we did over the weekend at the getaway cottage my sister and sister-in-law own on Lake Livingston in the pineywoods of East Texas. Here’s a sunrise view from their back porch. Around 12 hours later, here’s the ...

October 05, 2016 Check out my neighbor’s beautiful blue rose of an agave, which I planted for her several years ago. Yes, you guessed it: it’s a whale’s tongue agave (A. ovatifolia), and it’s quickly grown into a truly stunning specimen. Surrounded by minty-leaved autumn sage (Salvia greggii), it has ...

September 19, 2016 So much for calling the end of summer. It’s been as hot as Georgia asphalt for the past week, and I’ve been out in it every day, getting the garden in shape for fall. At least it’s given me a chance to appreciate the spider lilies (Lycoris ...

August 11, 2016 Houston doesn’t always get a lot of love, especially from Austinites who invoke it as a negative example of soulless sprawl and traffic. True, Houston is a sprawling major city with congested highways (although I swear Austin may be its equal in traffic jams). But in-town you’ll ...

August 05, 2016 Yesterday I shared Part 1 of my visit to Wisconsin artist Wouterina De Raad’s mosaic sculpture garden, which was the final garden — and my favorite — on the recent Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling. Today I’ll end my Fling series with Part 2 about Wouterina‘s delightful, exploratory ...