Urban meadow and security landscaping at Austin forensics center and police station
October 23, 2016 How many police stations have landscaping like this? I spotted this raised meadow while driving through East Austin recently and slammed on the brakes to get a better look. From the street — 812 Springdale Road, in the Govalle neighborhood — you see this along one side ...
Adobe walls, secret gardens, history & art in Santa Fe
August 24, 2016 Our western road trip earlier this month took us through Santa Fe, New Mexico, one of the oldest cities in the U.S. and the oldest capital city in the country (dating to 1607). The compact historic district is a walkable several blocks of terracotta-colored adobe and adobe-style ...
Out and about in Houston: Public art and an artful home
August 11, 2016 Houston doesn’t always get a lot of love, especially from Austinites who invoke it as a negative example of soulless sprawl and traffic. True, Houston is a sprawling major city with congested highways (although I swear Austin may be its equal in traffic jams). But in-town you’ll ...
Scenes from Minneapolis gardens, sightseeing, and bloggers: Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling
August 03, 2016 This is my 10th post about the recent Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling, and I have two more coming up that cover one very special garden. Even so, I won’t have shown you every garden we visited. There were just too many! But here are a few images ...
Fired up for WaterFire in Providence, Rhode Island
July 22, 2016 Who says fire and water don’t mix? Not the city of Providence, Rhode Island. On July 9th, my daughter and I happened to be there during WaterFire, a free summer arts festival along the three rivers of downtown Providence, and we were excited to attend. What is ...
Palms and dinosaurs at McKee Botanical Garden
April 06, 2016 Two weeks ago, in mid-March, the family and I drove to Orlando for spring break. Before heading home, we stopped in Vero Beach, Florida, for a day at the shore and to visit McKee Botanical Garden. Yes, those are dinosaurs in the garden. Roar of the Dinosaur, ...
Belting It Out along the boardwalk on Lady Bird Lake
February 22, 2016 I’ve walked the hike-and-bike trail around Lady Bird Lake in downtown Austin many times. But on Saturday, for the first time, I walked the relatively new boardwalk portion of the trail (completed in 2014), which starts east of the Congress Avenue Bridge and ends at International Shores ...
10 years of Digging
February 14, 2016 Today marks a decade of blogging here at Digging — a decade! I was a young stay-at-home mother (a former editor who left the workforce to raise her kids) obsessively making my second garden when I started this blog to connect with other passionate gardeners and record ...
Drive-By Gardens: Xeriscapes taking off at Mueller neighborhood
January 08, 2016 On New Year’s Day, we took a stroll through Mueller neighborhood, a New Urban community in east-central Austin. Built on the site of the old airport, where acres of runways and parking lots once sprawled, attractive homes and row houses in a mix of different styles (no ...
Drive-By Gardens: Home with the armadillo on South Lamar
December 11, 2015 “All the fun of a real armadillo family with no unpleasant aftertaste,” is how the artist at 20 Digit Design describes his steel creatures. I’ve rubbernecked at these fun armadillo sculptures many a time while driving down South Lamar Boulevard toward Mockingbird Domestics, one of my favorite ...
Friday fun, a garden gift, and a birth announcement
December 04, 2015 Here’s the fun! This giant steel spider sculpture — it’s friendly, I think; notice the leg wave — can be found at Mueller neighborhood’s Southwest Greenway, my in-laws’ new neighborhood (which means I’ll be doing garden drive-bys in Mueller a lot more often). With a bellyful of ...
Looking Up at Laguna Gloria and Austin City Hall
November 23, 2015 Last Saturday, a chilly, blustery day under a brilliant cobalt-blue sky, my dad and I attended two docent-led tours about the landscape architecture at cultural sites in Austin: one at Laguna Gloria, the other at Austin City Hall. Led by landscape architects who’ve restored or designed these ...
Alpha males along Buffalo Bayou: Tolerance sculptures by Jaume Plensa
November 14, 2015 When she runs along Houston’s newly scenic Allen Parkway, my sister passes a septet of sculptures that she loves. They’re peaceful, she explained, as she asked if I’d photograph them for her during my visit last weekend. Early last Saturday, we headed over to Buffalo Bayou Park, ...
Twilight Epiphany Skyspace at Rice University, a de-light-ful work of art
November 12, 2015 For my fellow Owls who’ll be at Homecoming this weekend, and for anyone else visiting the art mecca of Houston, if you don’t already know about James Turrell’s Twilight Epiphany Skyspace at Rice University, you should. When you’re on campus, you can’t miss the pyramidal structure capped ...
Munro Lights at Atlanta Botanical Garden, and a whale of a show at Georgia Aquarium
July 31, 2015 Earth Goddess, Atlanta Botanical Garden After we left New Orleans, we drove to Atlanta, Georgia, arriving in time for a Sunday evening visit to Atlanta Botanical Garden to see a special art exhibit, Bruce Munro: Light in the Garden. Seeing a garden in late afternoon and at ...
It’s not hard to enjoy the Big Easy
July 29, 2015 If you want to feel that you’ve traveled to a foreign city without leaving the country, visit New Orleans and stay in the historic French Quarter. We made the 8-hour drive from Austin a couple of weeks ago — our first stop on a family road trip ...
