Love just around the bend at Bella Madrona: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 17, 2014 For our final tour on the Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland last month, our bus stopped on a rural highway and deposited us in a field with a few pieces of rusty farming equipment strewn about. Not sure what to expect, I walked through open gates adorned ...
Garden magic and whimsy at Floramagoria: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 13, 2014 As we entered the intriguingly named Floramagoria garden on the recent Portland Garden Bloggers Fling, thunder rumbled and raindrops pelted our group of 40 or so bloggers. The reasonable — and hungry — among us ran for the two covered pavilions with box lunches in hand. The ...
Display gardens at Sunset Publishing headquarters: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
July 22, 2013 Our 2nd stop on the 2nd day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was the low-slung headquarters of Sunset Publishing Corp. in Menlo Park, where we toured Sunset’s display gardens. While central Texas is just east of the western U.S. region covered by Sunset magazine, the ...
Austin Open Days Tour 2012: Garden of Jennifer and Fred Myers
November 04, 2012 On Saturday I joined several garden-blogging friends for the biennial Open Days tour, sponsored by the Garden Conservancy. I consider Open Days to be the best garden tour in Austin. You often see high-design gardens mingled with a gardener’s sensibility and creative, personal touches. This year’s Open ...
Remembering a sunny flower market
June 25, 2012 Sunflower happiness! On this 100-degree, hot, dry Monday, I’m feeling the need for a pick-me-up, and maybe you are too. Drought and wildfires are afflicting much of the country, so let’s escape with a virtual visit to the farmers market at the Capitol Square in Madison, Wisconsin ...
In the garden of Each Little World
September 17, 2010 Each Little World is one of my regular reads. Written by Linda Brazill and illustrated with gorgeous photos by her husband, Mark Golbach, their blog gives me tantalizing glimpses into the green, serene garden they’ve created together in Madison, Wisconsin. When the garden blogger meet-up was held ...
Bloom Day at Madison’s Farmers Market
September 15, 2010 Having just returned from a trip to Madison, Wisconsin, where my husband competed in his first Ironman triathlon, I want to treat you to pics from the delightful Dane County Farmers’ Market on the Capitol Square last Saturday. Overcast skies and a little rain could not dampen ...
Bloom Day at Madison's Farmers Market
September 15, 2010 Having just returned from a trip to Madison, Wisconsin, where my husband competed in his first Ironman triathlon, I want to treat you to pics from the delightful Dane County Farmers’ Market on the Capitol Square last Saturday. Overcast skies and a little rain could not dampen ...
Sweet spring bouquet
February 28, 2009 As the temperature soared toward a record high of 91 degrees (32.7 C) yesterday, I plotted another garden raid at the Unsold House. With clippers in one hand and a vase of water in the other, I snipped a few daffodils and bearded iris, rescuing them from ...
A visit to Chanticleer: Asian Woods & Stream Garden
July 22, 2008 During our tour of Chanticleer in early July, the mistiness of early afternoon gave way to bright sunshine as we dipped into the Asian Woods garden below the main house. Tall trees, their lower trunks wrapped in wire trellises for climbing vines, create a serene wood and ...
Daylily delights
May 27, 2008 ‘Apple Tart’ daylily May is my daylily month. When school used to let out in mid-May, we often went on vacation and missed most of the flowers. Now that the state legislature has stuck its nose in the business of local school districts and dictated when school ...
Portraits from Spring Fling
April 07, 2008 Normally we garden bloggers “sell” our posts with photos of flowers. Post-Spring Fling, I think it will be people pics that arrest the skimming reader. The Garden Bloggers Spring Fling, held last Saturday right here in Austin, yielded new and renewed friendships, good conversation, good eats, and ...
Amsterdam in bloom
July 17, 2007 Traveling home from Tanzania, my dad and I stopped for two nights in Amsterdam to have a look around, as we were passing through and neither of us had been to the Netherlands before. What a change from dusty, dry-season Tanzania. Surrounded by water and picturesquely built ...
From Valentines straight to Summer
May 29, 2007 My red, red rose, ‘Valentine,’ rebloomed this week, after a period of seeming broken-hearted. It had flowered wonderfully in early spring, but by April it had started to defoliate and by May it was twiggy and pitiful looking. It never turned fully brown, however, like MSS’s roses ...
Be mine, green Valentine
February 14, 2007 This Valentine’s Day, I’m giving my husband something different. It’s a sweet botanical arrangement from Big Red Sun. Isn’t it beautiful? In January I posted a photo tour of this hip nursery and mentioned, but did not photograph, their to-die-for arrangements of succulents. A few days ago, ...
