Gardens on Tour 2013: Kathy Cove Garden
May 13, 2013 Garden tour season in central Texas kicked off last Saturday with the annual Wildflower Center-sponsored Gardens on Tour, which this year featured five Austin gardens in which native plants play a predominant role. I toured with three other bloggers — Cat from The Whimsical Gardener, Shirley from ...
Lake Livingston, I presume? Birding and boating in the East Texas pineywoods
March 22, 2013 We wrapped up our spring break vacation last weekend with a visit to the pineywoods of East Texas and the cute little lake house that belongs to my sister and her partner. This is the view from their yard. Located on the Kickapoo Creek side of Lake ...
Visit to San Antonio’s Japanese Tea Garden
March 13, 2013 Day-tripping in San Antonio last weekend, my family and I made time for a stroll through the Japanese Tea Garden, located near the zoo in Brackenridge Park. Constructed in an old limestone quarry, the gardens are framed and accessed by fascinating and unusual stonework, including a pagoda-like ...
Visit to San Antonio's Japanese Tea Garden
March 13, 2013 Day-tripping in San Antonio last weekend, my family and I made time for a stroll through the Japanese Tea Garden, located near the zoo in Brackenridge Park. Constructed in an old limestone quarry, the gardens are framed and accessed by fascinating and unusual stonework, including a pagoda-like ...
Tait Moring’s garden with a view
November 29, 2012 You’ve all been very good this year, and Santa says there’s time for one more garden tour before Christmas, so here you go. I visited this garden in late October, at the invitation of owner/designer Tait Moring, who had it all spruced up for a busload of ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Rockcliff Road Garden
November 10, 2012 My fifth stop on last Saturday’s Open Days tour, the Rockcliff Road Garden, was really more of a sculpture garden. Lots of open space on this lakeside property, graced with a home designed by Lake Flato Architects, gives prominence to many large works of art placed on ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Bonnell Drive Garden
November 08, 2012 My fourth stop on Saturday’s Open Days tour was the Bonnell Drive Garden in hilly West Austin, created by my friend Curt Arnette of Sitio Design. (For a post about Curt’s fascinating personal garden, click here.) The contemporary front garden complements the Texas-modern style of the wood-and-limestone ...
The DreamFlower desert garden of Lorien Tersey
October 26, 2012Arizona adobe When you have to jackhammer the “soil” to plant anything, when your garden gets only 12 inches of rainfall a year, when you live in a desert, you just know gardening isn’t going to be easy. And yet, despite these conditions in Tucson, Arizona, which I ...
Romantic gardens of Fearrington House, North Carolina
August 22, 2012 Lovely strolling gardens wrap all sides of the country inn at Fearrington Village, near Chapel Hill, North Carolina, which I visited earlier this month. I spent a happy hour early one morning exploring its grounds, which include an English-style white garden, an herb garden, shrub borders, and ...
Rocky Mountain National Park: Bear Lake, wildlife, and tundra
July 12, 2012 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 ...
Asheville Garden Bloggers Fling: Gentling Garden, a mountainside eden
May 23, 2012 The first thing you learn about gardens in Asheville, North Carolina, on the slopes of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is that they have a lot of stairs. We’re talking serious elevation changes. What does this mean for the gardeners who live here? Well, for one thing they ...
Canyons, river, and sky: Big Bend country (Days 2-3)
March 20, 2012 Following up on my overall impressions of Big Bend National Park, today I’ll take you on a tour of the sights. Our first morning we drove up into the Chisos Mountains to hike the Chisos Basin Loop Trail. At an elevation of 4,500 feet over the desert ...
Big sky, scorched earth at Big Bend National Park (Day 1)
March 19, 2012 Lured west by the mystery of one of America’s lesser known national parks, we packed broad-brimmed hats, sunscreen, and several gallons of water in the trunk and left behind the crowds of SXSW last Wednesday, driving for 8 hours through increasingly open country to Big Bend. Traveling ...
Walking on air at Capilano Suspension Bridge in Vancouver
September 07, 2011 For vertigo-inducing views and a swing—and a bounce!—in your step, cross a gorge on a suspension bridge sometime. My family and I traipsed across this one, Capilano Suspension Bridge, last month while visiting Vancouver, British Columbia. Originally constructed in 1889 out of hemp and rebuilt with wire ...
Vancouver orca-watching expedition with killer whale views
September 04, 2011 After the magical orca-watching experience from shore on San Juan Island, we doubted we could top it, even though we’d already reserved a whale-watching expedition in Vancouver, British Columbia, the final stop on our Pacific Northwest vacation last month. And we were right. It was more incredible ...
Orcas, eagles & scenic views in the San Juan Islands
August 30, 2011 A chilly, misty, 6 a.m. ferry ride across the Rosario Strait late last month spirited me and my family from Anacortes, north of bustling Seattle, to charming Friday Harbor on San Juan Island, part of the archipelago known as the San Juan Islands of Washington State. Easily ...
