Graffiti plant
January 22, 2020 Last weekend I spotted this graffiti of a flowering yucca or palm on a bridge support at Lady Bird Lake. Sometimes you just need a plant where no plant can grow. __________________________ Digging Deeper Come learn about gardening and design at Garden Spark! I organize in-person talks ...
Kempelen’s Owls and more public art in downtown Austin
December 27, 2019 Looking for free family fun over the holidays? Why not burn a few calories on a self-guided walking tour of public art in downtown Austin? My daughter and I did just that a few days before Christmas. I was eager to see Kempelen’s Owls, a pair of ...
November walk at Lady Bird Lake
November 06, 2019 A perfect fall day calls for a walk around Lady Bird Lake, so on Sunday there I was, at Lou Neff Point, viewing Austin’s mushrooming skyline and the towering Jenga building. Taking the U-turn trail around Barton Creek, I paused to admire the green spring water and ...
Chandor Gardens, née White Shadows, a hidden gem in North Texas, part 1
October 29, 2019 White Shadows — the name evokes romance and mystery — seems wholly appropriate for the dappled-shade garden surrounding a pale-gray house in the small Texas town of Weatherford, 30 miles west of Fort Worth. Here, in a series of alternately elegant and rustic garden rooms, you’ll find ...
Casa Neverlandia and sculpture by James Talbot keep Austin delightfully weird
October 10, 2019 Never pass up a chance to see something creative or unusual. Seeing how someone’s passion gets turned into art fascinates me. So when I heard about Casa Neverlandia, the home of fellow Rice University grad, artist, architect, and free spirit James Talbot, I knew I had to ...
Bat watching in Austin
August 29, 2019 Nightwing by Dale Whistler at the south end of the Congress Avenue Bridge represents Texas’s official flying mammal and looks great with Pride of Barbados (Caesalpinia pulcherrima). Austin goes extra batty in August, when the colony of Mexican free-tailed bats under the Congress Avenue Bridge swells with ...
Roman (ruin) holiday in southern France
August 23, 2019 I can explore a garden or busy market all day long, but I have a low attention span for cathedrals and museums, no matter how stunning. I joke with my husband, who loves the history and culture of such spaces, that I prefer places that are alive, ...
Eyeing London during unplanned stopover
August 13, 2019 Last month my husband and I planned to meet up with our college-age daughter in Grenoble, France, at the end of her study abroad program there. When our connecting flight through London Heathrow was cancelled (and not rescheduled for THREE days, so we ended up taking a ...
Children’s Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
July 17, 2019 Part of the Mordecai Children’s Garden at Denver Botanic Gardens, which I visited during the Denver Fling (June 2019), sits atop a parking garage, making it one very large rooftop garden. A pretty alpine garden, including this crevice garden, greets you as you enter, and it surprised ...
Crevice gardens to crave at the garden of Carol Shinn: Denver Garden Bloggers Fling
June 28, 2019 Colorado gardeners are crazy for crevice gardens, and no wonder. When the Rocky Mountains peek over your back fence, creating a miniature mountain range in your yard makes perfect sense. Alpine plants that thrive at high altitude and require excellent drainage love these rocky niches. Crevice gardens ...
Pennybacker Bridge overlook above Lake Austin
November 26, 2018 I’ve lived in Austin for 24 years and yet somehow, until recently, had never seen the city from its most famous overlook along Capital of Texas Highway on the north side of Lake Austin, where a limestone cliff offers a postcard-worthy view of iconic Pennybacker Bridge (aka ...
Houston, capital of Southern-cool art?
August 24, 2018 Detail of Dixie Friend Gay’s mosaic Wild Wonderland in Houston’s Midtown Park Speeding away from the sleepy South Carolina town I grew up in, I rolled into megatropolis Houston at the nadir of the mid-1980s oil crash. Local shops were shuttered, regional banks were going out of ...
Kew Gardens walkabout: Mediterranean Garden, Treetop Walkway, and more
July 15, 2018 London’s Kew Gardens is a big place at 300 acres, with a variety of gardens, glasshouses, a magnificent arboretum, and other attractions. During my mid-June visit on a family vacation, I saw as much as I could during a 4- or 5-hour visit. Here’s the last installment ...
Roses, swans, and ravens: Rambling in London’s parks and Tower of London
July 08, 2018 We arrived in London in mid-June, where we stayed two nights and spent our days eating fish and chips and Indian food, sightseeing, and rambling in London’s excellent parks. (We also visited the magnificent Kew Gardens, which I’ll share in my next post.) London’s public parks made ...
Waterlilies and roses at Monet’s garden in Giverny
July 01, 2018 Having admired his waterlily series at the Musée de l’Orangerie, we decided to visit French impressionist Claude Monet’s garden in Giverny while vacationing in Paris last month. Braving Paris traffic, we rented a car one Sunday morning and drove 50 miles northwest to Giverny, with plans to ...
The romance of Venice
June 24, 2018 You can hardly believe a city like this really exists, its gelato-hued, wedding-cake buildings perched at the edge of watery streets… …boats zipping past instead of cars… …the ancient house facades and narrow alleys suffused with a romantic decay. Speaking of gelato On June 3rd we flew ...
