Marfa’s masses of sotols at John Chamberlain Building
August 06, 2023 I spotted a sotol convention while I was in Marfa in far West Texas last week. The spherical, toothy plants — I think these are Texas sotol (Dasylirion texanum) — are growing in a long grid in front of the Chinati Foundation’s John Chamberlain Building on 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 ...
Robert Bellamy’s upcycled Marfa garden
August 02, 2023 Last week I road-tripped 7 hours west to remote Marfa, a sleepy desert town in far West Texas that’s also, thanks to Donald Judd, an art mecca drawing visitors from all over the world. Quite a few Marfa lovers from Dallas, Houston, and Austin own second homes ...
Drive-By Gardens: Waterwise front yard on Castle Hill
July 11, 2023 Cruising through the Castle Hill area of Old West Austin recently, I spotted this beautiful 1910 home with a sky-blue door and modern landscaping. I hit the brakes for a closer look. The house sits atop a front yard terraced with Corten steel and board-formed concrete walls ...
Evening under the Petals at Blanton Museum
July 07, 2023 I’ve been wanting to see the Petals at Austin’s Blanton Museum of Art ever since the flower-shaped shade structures were officially unveiled in May. For one thing, I’m a big fan of shade in Texas. For another, I love public art. The Petals are a grove of ...
Drive-By Garden: Waterwise front yard and patio
June 30, 2023 Driving around the Delwood neighborhood in East Austin last week I spotted this attractive waterwise front yard. A huge crape myrtle shades one side of the midcentury-style home, sheltering a small patio beneath its branches. On the sunny side, Mexican feathergrass, giant hesperaloe, firecracker fern, and fall ...
Wildflowers, breathtaking views at Horseshoe Bend and Glen Canyon Dam
June 16, 2023 Hatted and sunscreened against the intense desert sun, we took a morning walk out to see Horseshoe Bend in Page, Arizona, before our tour of Antelope Canyon. This was back in late April, during our 5-week RV trip to see western National Parks. Wild rhubarb (I think?) ...
Meadow in bloom for the birds and bees
June 15, 2023 While I was in San Antonio two weeks ago, Melody shared a friend’s meadow garden with me. The Kinder garden on Winding Way glowed that morning with tall golden sunflowers, swaths of fiery blanketflower, and my new fave, shaggy lavender American basketflower. I circled the meadow, enjoying ...
Beams of light set Antelope Canyon aglow
June 13, 2023 You’ve seen it in photos: swirling red sandstone walls aglow with light, like the inside of a conch shell or a Himalayan salt crystal lamp. Shafts of light that pinpoint, like Indiana Jones’s amulet beam, precise spots on the sandy floor. This is Antelope Canyon, as graceful ...
Old San Antonio style in Melody’s garden
June 12, 2023 While in San Antonio two weeks ago, I met up with my friend Melody, who invited me to see her garden again. I first visited 9 years ago — whaaaat? where does the time go? — and was eager to see it again. In her large flower ...
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 ...
Golden hour with a canyon view
May 31, 2023 On a recent golden afternoon I snail-crawled my way through my friend Cat‘s garden as she narrated its spring journey. The tale happily meandered, and so did our feet. I stopped to admire each glowing moment. Isn’t this a charming vignette, with a terracotta frog perched among ...
On the hunt for a Shantung maple at Metro Maples
April 18, 2023 One thing that may surprise you about North Texas gardens is they frequently indulge a passion for Japanese maples. In the leafy, older neighborhoods of Dallas–Fort Worth, Japanese maples fill the understory with wine-red leaves and a ballerina’s grace. Although they need deep soakings during droughty Texas ...
Garden party at Lucinda’s purple casita
April 05, 2023 I kicked up my heels at Lucinda Hutson‘s purple casita a week ago, charmed as ever by her festive, Tex-Mex garden and her way of celebrating life through good food, friendship, and color. I wore a Mexican-style dress like Lucinda often does, but I left the purple ...
Fields awash in Texas bluebonnets and other wildflowers
March 25, 2023 Galvanized by swaths of bluebonnets (Lupinus texensis) coloring Austin’s urban roadsides, I drove east on Thursday morning to wander the dirt roads of Industry, a town of around 273 people. There I found farmsteads in rolling fields of denim blue. The bluebonnets are showing off this spring, ...
Bandelier cliff dwellings, Valles Caldera, and epic New Mexico scenery
November 13, 2022 In early September, at the end of our trip to Santa Fe, New Mexico, we drove out to Bandelier National Monument. We’d last explored its ancient cliff dwellings and pueblo ruin two decades earlier, and we wanted to hike and see it again. Bandelier National Monument We ...
