Rock Rose garden abloom before the hailstorm
April 27, 2015 Two weeks ago my friend Jenny Stocker, blogger at Rock Rose and gardener extraordinaire, offered me a division of a water iris for my pond. When I arrived, mid-morning on a sunny, warm day, Jenny gave me a tour and then kindly set me loose to wander ...
A blooming good time at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center
April 14, 2015 Spring is the Wildflower Center‘s showiest season, and last Saturday I shared the gardens with many other flower-peepers. (Click for part 1 of my Wildflower Center visit.) In this post we’ll revisit the nearly 1-year-old Luci and Ian Family Garden, where Gulf Coast penstemon (Penstemon tenuis) was ...
9 years of Digging
February 11, 2015Anole on agave, one of my favorite garden photosThis Valentine’s Day will mark Digging’s 9th blogiversary, the day I first clicked Publish with an enthusiasm that hasn’t dimmed in nearly a decade of regular postings. That day in February 2006 I joined a small but fast-growing community of ...
Houston Open Days Tour 2014: 3640 Del Monte Drive Garden
April 10, 2014 The last stop on my recap of the Garden Conservancy-sponsored Houston Open Days tour on March 29th is a New Orleans-esque mansion in the tony River Oaks neighborhood. From the front walk you see a veranda with wisteria dripping from the wrought-iron railing and a narrow foundation ...
Tanzanian safari: Tent camp on the Serengeti, crocodiles, and soaring over volcanoes
January 14, 2014 We made several more game drives while visiting the western corridor of Serengeti National Park (June 2007), seeing many, many elephants — and I took so many photos of them that my family got elephant-fatigue when viewing them later. I’ll only show you a few, and not ...
Tanzanian safari: Maasai school and Lake Manyara National Park
January 12, 2014 On our fourth day in Tanzania (June 2007) we visited a local school on the way to Lake Manyara. An English-language world map was painted on the school building. The only city noted on it is New York, which is of course how New Yorkers see the ...
Fall hike at St. Edward’s Park in northwest Austin
November 18, 2013 We’ve been hiking at St. Edward’s Park — more of a greenbelt trail, really — for 20 years, enjoying the reliable flow of Bull Creek, the treetop views from the bluff that follows the creek, and the park’s relative solitude, especially as compared to Barton Creek Greenbelt ...
Texas spiny lizard is master of camouflage
January 07, 2013Texas spiny lizardAt a New Year’s Day get-together at a neighbor’s house, talk turned to the creatures that share our suburban northwest Austin neighborhood: deer, armadillos, raccoons, coyotes, snakes, scorpions, tarantulas, and alligator lizards, which someone said they never see anymore. “They’re still here,” I protested, to dubious ...
Inside Austin Gardens Tour 2012: Ann and Robin Matthews Garden
October 11, 2012 I’m continuing my sneak preview of the upcoming Inside Austin Gardens Tour, hosted by the Travis County Master Gardeners. In my last post I showed you Donnis Doyle’s colorful, whimsical garden. This garden belongs to her next-door neighbors, Ann and Robin Matthews, and they’ve been friends and ...
My 6th blogiversary and I’m still Digging gardens
February 19, 2012 When I started blogging in February 2006, I had no idea I’d still be so passionate about it 6 years, or even a couple of years, later. But blogging has introduced me to so many friends (online and offline), helped me build my garden design business, spurred ...
Hartman Prehistoric Garden is cycad-delic
March 31, 2011 One hundred million years ago, Austin looked a lot different. A shallow sea lapped across central Texas, and later, as the sea retreated, cycads, magnolias, ferns, reeds and other ancient plants colonized the humid marshes. A dinosaur like this one walked here, leaving behind footprints that fossilized ...
Garden Designers Roundtable: Gardening with Nature, Gardening for Wildlife
August 24, 2010 Just in from a morning stroll through my garden, and what delights I witnessed. A tiny, blurry-winged hummingbird making the rounds from Mexican oregano to flame-leaf acanthus to Turk’s cap to Agastache. Honeybees spelunking for pollen. A leggy, spotted fawn tucked into a stand of bamboo muhly ...
Everglades National Park: A beautiful, mysterious waterworld
March 23, 2010 Anhingas and flowering bromeliads in the Everglades, Florida On telling friends that we were planning to visit Everglades National Park, my husband and I found that raised eyebrows and wrinkled noses were the most common responses. Why visit a bug-infested swamp, they asked. We have a thing ...
Naples Botanical Garden: Gardens with Latitude
March 22, 2010 Over spring break we drove 3,200 miles (5,149 km) round-trip to Florida, with stops in Orlando, Miami, Everglades National Park, the Keys (all the way to Key West), and finally Naples to see the brand-new botanical garden there. Planted last August and opened to the public in ...
Perfect fall morning
October 30, 2009 ‘Radrazz’ Knock Out roses in the morning light of late October I should have been working all morning in the garden. The weather is perfect—cool, sunny, and calm—and I’m still in the process of digging out grass in the side yard by the new fence, plus the ...
New-baby garden mash-up
May 03, 2009 In the new-baby garden this May 3rd, it’s a mash-up of spring hangers-on and summer debutantes, of inherited plants from the previous owners and transplants I brought over from my old garden last fall. And of course new plants I purchased for the new garden are doing ...
