Bloggers soaked up Austin at Garden Bloggers Fling
May 11, 2018 For 11 years I’ve traveled to cities around North America to attend Garden Bloggers Fling, and I’ve helped organize two Flings held in Austin — in and again last weekend. Normally I take hundreds of pictures of the gardens I visit. (Go to Categories in my sidebar ...
Leaf-peeping, zombies, and Thorncrown Chapel in Eureka Springs, Arkansas
November 03, 2017 Last Friday my husband and I drove up to northern Arkansas for an extended weekend just before Halloween, hoping to see colorful fall foliage while making a first-time visit to Eureka Springs. I didn’t know what to expect from Eureka Springs aside from hilly terrain, natural springs, ...
Hello, winter — you’ve zapped my garden
January 16, 2017 Hello, winter! We’re not used to seeing you here in Central Texas. Despite predictions of a mild winter, with the warming influence of a La Niña, we’ve already had two multi-day stretches of hard freezes, with a couple of nights dropping into the upper teens. The result? ...
Outdoors at The Domain’s Rock Rose
December 03, 2016 My mother and I had lunch in the new Rock Rose section of The Domain (a New Urbanist-style live/work/shop development in North Austin) last week and poked around in the shops afterward. Naturally, I yanked my phone out along the way to take pictures of cool landscaping ...
Out and about in Houston: Public art and an artful home
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 ...
Scenes from Minneapolis gardens, sightseeing, and bloggers: Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling
August 03, 2016 This is my 10th post about the recent Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling, and I have two more coming up that cover one very special garden. Even so, I won’t have shown you every garden we visited. There were just too many! But here are a few images ...
10 years of Digging
February 14, 2016 Today marks a decade of blogging here at Digging — a decade! I was a young stay-at-home mother (a former editor who left the workforce to raise her kids) obsessively making my second garden when I started this blog to connect with other passionate gardeners and record ...
Flower-adorned skeletons at Dia de los Muertos parade
November 02, 2015 Today is the final day of Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a 3-day Mexican holiday that’s celebrated here in Austin too. My daughter and I attended the Day of the Dead parade in downtown Austin on Saturday, part of the 32nd annual Viva ...
Drive-By Gardens: South Congress Avenue in Austin
November 24, 2014 This drive-by is really a walk-by. I was on South Congress Avenue on Sunday afternoon, the center of the funky-hip Austin universe, enjoying a blue-sky, 80-degree day with my family. Fall, winter, and spring days like this are what sustain me through Austin’s broiling summers. When my ...
Up on the High Line, a skyline promenade
October 19, 2014 Have you ever flown across the country to see one garden? I did last weekend. Rapturous articles and blog posts about the High Line, New York City’s garden-park conversion of an abandoned elevated rail line through the city’s old Meatpacking District, had seduced me for 5 years ...
Hillside magic in the Nichols Garden: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
August 06, 2013 Our 4th stop on the final day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was my absolute favorite of the Fling: the Ann Nichols Garden. Gorgeous plants, beautifully combined and meticulously maintained, adorn a series of intimate garden rooms on a hillside lot. A subtropical front garden ...
Santa Barbara street painting festival, Old Mission, and jacarandas
June 13, 2013 Santa Barbara’s 23rd annual I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival was held Memorial Day weekend on the plaza in front of the Old Mission. We stopped by on that Monday to see both. A crowd was gathering under bright-blue skies to watch the artists — the madonnari ...
Nightlife in Terlingua, Texas: Ghost town and the Starlight Theatre
March 21, 2012 In my post about Big Bend National Park, I mentioned that I preferred the evenings, when the glaring sun slid behind the mountains and the stars came out. In the desert, perhaps it’s always been so. Evening is a time of coolness and relaxation, dinner around the ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month: The Great Outdoors
October 19, 2011It’s Support Your Independent Nursery month! Each Wednesday in October I’m posting about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area. Today I’m shining a spotlight on The Great Outdoors, located just south of the hip strip known as SoCo on South Congress Avenue. (This ...
Gardens on Tour 2011: Stratford Drive garden
May 09, 2011 Imagine a steep, overgrown hillside of invasive nandina, bamboo, and ligustrum. That’s what the homeowners on Stratford Drive looked out on after building a contemporary, 5-star green home (as rated by the Austin Energy Green Building program) in the Rollingwood neighborhood of west Austin. According to the ...
Skeletons on parade: Day of the Dead 2010
October 26, 2010 Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday known as Day of the Dead, is embraced in Austin each year with a street festival and parade. Unlike the macabre spectacle of Halloween, Day of the Dead is traditionally about remembering and honoring departed loved ones by creating altars ...
