Supermoon over downtown Austin
March 21, 2011 Last Saturday, on the Pfluger Bridge spanning Lady Bird Lake, I joined a handful of moon watchers with tripods and long lenses, pocket-sized point-and-shoots, and camera phones held aloft to capture images of the “supermoon” as it rose over downtown Austin. I didn’t get the photo I ...
Swan lake
November 25, 2010 Happy Thanksgiving to all my American readers! I thought a few restful images might be in order on such a busy cooking day. I saw these swans at Lady Bird Lake a few days ago, and they looked so peaceful. Some ducks came around too to see ...
Rich autumn color at Lady Bird Lake
November 23, 2010 Lady Bird Lake blazed with fall color last Friday afternoon. Strolling the 3-mile loop on the hike-and-bike trail, my daughter and I were captivated by the beauty of rusty bald cypresses and golden cedar elms and realized we’d lucked upon the peak of fall foliage. Admittedly, the ...
Slacklining at Lady Bird Lake in Austin
November 21, 2010 While strolling around Lady Bird Lake on Friday afternoon, I witnessed an interesting sport called slacklining. I’d just read about it in the local paper, but it was remarkable to observe in person. A group of slackliners had strung their line—flat, stretchy nylon webbing—between two piers of ...
Gardens of Lake Austin Spa
October 14, 2010 Yesterday the Director of Flora & Fauna at Lake Austin Spa, the talented Trisha Shirey, gave me an early morning tour of the spa’s gardens, which she has tended for more than 26 years. A staff of nine full-time gardeners assists her in organically maintaining and updating ...
Japanese Garden in Buffalo’s Delaware Park: Buffalo Garden Bloggers Fling
July 14, 2010 One of the stops on Friday’s bus tour at Garden Bloggers Buffa10 was the Japanese Garden in Delaware Park. Part of Buffalo’s historic Olmsted Parks System, the garden was constructed in 1974 by its Japanese sister city, Kanazawa, but as Buffalo fell on hard times the park ...
Summertime and the living is easy
July 05, 2010 This is how we spent the Fourth of July weekend, just relaxing at Lake Livingston in east Texas. My thanks to Kim and Claire for their hospitality, good eats, and sharing their new lake house with us. All material © 2006-2010 by Pam Penick for Digging. Unauthorized ...
On top of Austin at the Austonian
June 06, 2010 I enjoyed a bird’s-eye view of Austin last Wednesday from the top of the Austonian, Austin’s newest, tallest, and surely most luxurious condominium tower. My friend Terry Mitchell, a member of the marketing and public relations team, and his wife kindly offered me and my husband and ...
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 ...
On high at Mount Bonnell
December 02, 2009 View of Lake Austin and the Pennybacker Bridge from atop Mt. Bonnell What Austinites call mountains would be called foothills in more towering regions. It’s part of the same exaggeration that has Austin in a tizzy right now over cold temperatures that just might drop all the ...
Dam fun & native plants at LCRA's Wilkerson Center
November 27, 2009 Queen butterfly in the Wilkerson Center’s native-plant garden The siren song of beautiful fall weather, combined with school holidays last week, pulled us, unresisting, outdoors every day to enjoy local sightseeing in Austin. On Wednesday I took the kids to the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) on ...
Dam fun & native plants at LCRA’s Wilkerson Center
November 27, 2009 Queen butterfly in the Wilkerson Center’s native-plant garden The siren song of beautiful fall weather, combined with school holidays last week, pulled us, unresisting, outdoors every day to enjoy local sightseeing in Austin. On Wednesday I took the kids to the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) on ...
Blogger field trip: San Antonio Botanical Garden
November 08, 2009 A monarch and honeybee share space on a Mexican sunflower (Tithonia rotundiflora) Twelve Austin garden bloggers caravaned to San Antonio on Saturday to visit San Antonio Botanical Garden and the Antique Rose Emporium, with a stop along the way at Madrone Nursery in San Marcos, a native-plant ...
High in Rocky Mountain National Park
October 13, 2009 Bierstadt Lake, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado After Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which figured prominently in my childhood travels, Rocky Mountain National Park is the one I’ve visited most often. New Yorkers head for Florida in the summer, right? Well, Texans head for Colorado. If you ...
Welcome to Austin
February 10, 2008 Do you picture cowboys, cattle, and cactus when you think about Austin, Texas? If so, consider instead how we Austinites see our hometown: Live Music Capital of the World and home to PBS’s long-running “Austin City Limits” concert series. Stevie Ray Vaughan, Willie Nelson, the Chicks, Spoon, ...
