Visit to Quinta Mazatlan, birding, and Planta Nativa Festival
October 27, 2016 Texas is a big state, and living in the center of it means that whichever direction you travel, it’s a long drive to the state line. Last weekend, that meant a 5-hour drive to the Rio Grande Valley, where Texas shares a border with Mexico. My destination? ...
Silobration at Magnolia Market and Fixer Upper fandom
October 12, 2016 Uninitiated into the world of Chip and Joanna Gaines and their HGTV show Fixer Upper because we don’t have cable TV, I’d nevertheless picked up an inkling of their popularity from fellow bloggers and multiple magazine features. So when we were in Waco last Saturday for one ...
RH Austin rooftop garden showcases contemporary outdoor furniture
October 06, 2016 Three weeks after its grand opening, I climbed the glittering, mirrored grand staircase at the 62,000-square-foot mansion known as RH Austin (Restoration Hardware, rebranded), one of the anchor stores in the new Northside section of The Domain shopping center in north Austin. After a cursory inspection of ...
First oxblood lily, tree cavities, and last Moby
September 10, 2016 The majority, I think, are waiting for that first fall rain. But two oxblood lilies (Rhodophiala bifida) are trumpeting red in my garden, including this stray in the sedge lawn out front. I transplanted the bulbs from the front to the back last year, after the deer ...
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 ...
Magical mosaics in the garden of Wouterina De Raad, Part 2: Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling
August 05, 2016 Yesterday I shared Part 1 of my visit to Wisconsin artist Wouterina De Raad’s mosaic sculpture garden, which was the final garden — and my favorite — on the recent Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling. Today I’ll end my Fling series with Part 2 about Wouterina‘s delightful, exploratory ...
Corten potager beauty in Rhonda Fleming Hayes’s garden: Minneapolis Garden Bloggers Fling
July 24, 2016 I’m dubbing this summer Escape to the North. In the space of two months I’ve made three trips to the northern, cooler half of the U.S., starting with the Philadelphia area; then Providence, Rhode Island; and finally Minneapolis, where the 9th annual Garden Bloggers Fling was held ...
Garden marries home at destination nursery/garden shop Terrain
June 20, 2016 Anthropologie meets Flora Grubb Gardens? Yes, please! While in the Brandywine Valley outside of Philadelphia earlier this month, I was eager to visit Terrain, a nursery, home and garden shop, and restaurant located in Glen Mills, Pennsylvania. (There’s a second location in Westport, Connecticut.) Founded by the ...
Dining, dancing amid flowers on Field to Vase Dinner Tour
May 31, 2016 A jug of wine, a loaf of bread, and thou may be pleasant enough. But add Crayola-bright fields of flowers, a big blue barn, tables adorned with festive bouquets, chef-made dishes, a western swing band, and the starry skies of the Texas Hill Country, and you have ...
Dry-garden lushness: Linda Peterson’s San Antonio garden
April 18, 2016 Rooftop view of the walled courtyard and front garden. Not a blade of lawn grass anywhere, nor is it missed. Seeing one of my new favorite gardens requires an hour-and-a-half road trip to San Antonio, but it’s worth every trafficky mile. Linda Peterson, whose dreamy garden I ...
Bottle trees, a Southern tradition that brightens the garden
January 13, 2016Writer and teacher Paula Panich visited my garden a few weeks ago, and if I hadn’t already known she was from California by way of Connecticut — i.e., not a Southerner — she gave it away when she asked what was the story with the blue bottles displayed ...
Public plaza at San Antonio’s Pearl, an urban re-use neighborhood
January 06, 2016 The old Pearl Brewery in San Antonio might have been razed, once its brewing days were over. Instead its century-old manufacturing buildings have been transformed into restaurants and even a boutique hotel and embraced by walkable streets lined with shops and apartment buildings. Public green spaces throughout ...
Remember the Alamo for Christmas lights in San Antonio
December 23, 2015 We rolled down I-35 to San Antonio on Monday afternoon to see the famous Christmas lights along the River Walk. Naturally, we remembered the Alamo and made that our first stop. A grand tree alight with clusters of colored bulbs and cascading ribbons, bedecked with oversized San ...
Zilker Holiday Tree lights Austin skyline again
November 30, 2015 Last night Austin officially got into the holiday spirit with the lighting of the Zilker Tree. A spectacle of 3,000 colored lights strung from the moonlight tower at Zilker Park, the tree stands 155 feet tall and will glow every night through New Year’s Eve. Our family ...
October evening stroll on South Congress Avenue
October 31, 2015 I had dinner on Austin’s iconic South Congress Avenue on Wednesday evening and afterward took a leisurely stroll to people-watch and window-shop. Honky-tonk music from Guero’s Oak Garden filled the cool evening air, people were smiling, and the street had a festive yet laid-back vibe that made ...
Falling for the Folly Bowl, a garden amphitheater
October 07, 2015 Twelve years ago, Los Angeles garden designer Susanna Dadd and her husband, artist James Griffith, built a back-yard amphitheater in a ravine alongside their Altadena home. Dubbing it The Folly Bowl, they’ve been hosting free, or nearly free, public concerts each summer, choosing unique performers that will ...
