Evergreen Brick Works community greenspace: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 30, 2015 For nearly 100 years, Don Valley Brick Works supplied Toronto with masonry bricks and helped the city rebuild and grow after a devastating fire. By 1984, however, the kilns were closed down, and the factory buildings languished. Urban explorers and partying teens found their way in, and ...
Soaring over Houston: Jorge Marin’s Wings of the City exhibit
March 05, 2015 Archivaldo One reason I was eager to visit Houston last weekend was to see Mexican sculptor Jorge Marín‘s “Wings of the City” exhibit, which after months on display downtown at Discovery Green Park was ending on March 3rd. Nine of Marín’s bronzes — mainly life-sized male figures, ...
Visiting the 9/11 Memorial, 13 years later
November 11, 2014 The blue-sky, sunny day was reminiscent of the beautiful morning of September 11, 2001, when terrorists attacked and the World Trade Center towers fell. During our trip to New York City in mid-October, my daughter and I visited the 9/11 Memorial. Now almost 15, my daughter was ...
Sylvan silver: Paul Sorey tree sculpture shines in downtown Austin
October 29, 2014 One day a silver tree sprouted on a street corner in downtown Austin where nothing had grown for a year but piles of construction debris from the new Cirrus Logic building at West Avenue and W. 6th Street. I’d crawl past with one eye glued to the ...
Up on the High Line, a skyline promenade
October 19, 2014 Have you ever flown across the country to see one garden? I did last weekend. Rapturous articles and blog posts about the High Line, New York City’s garden-park conversion of an abandoned elevated rail line through the city’s old Meatpacking District, had seduced me for 5 years ...
Mosaic wall artfully, joyfully shares a neighborhood’s history
June 29, 2014 Have you ever stopped to look — really look — at a public work of art that you’ve passed dozens of times with only a passing glance or quickly forgotten curiosity? I did last week, and it was a magical experience to discover the beauty and positive ...
Chinese New Year? Remembering my Beijing visit, April 2005
January 04, 2014 While the garden sleeps I thought I’d start off the New Year with a post about the most foreign place I’ve ever visited: China. (Tanzania in Africa might have won that distinction but for the fact that I was on a guided tour and mostly in national ...
Santa Barbara street painting festival, Old Mission, and jacarandas
June 13, 2013 Santa Barbara’s 23rd annual I Madonnari Italian Street Painting Festival was held Memorial Day weekend on the plaza in front of the Old Mission. We stopped by on that Monday to see both. A crowd was gathering under bright-blue skies to watch the artists — the madonnari ...
Austin’s Graffiti Hill
April 11, 2013 Pulling out of Whole Earth Provision Company on N. Lamar Blvd. the other day, I spontaneously turned west, heading uphill on the alley-sized road behind the store, which dead-ends onto Baylor Street just below the “castle” that Castle Hill neighborhood is named for (originally built in 1869 ...
Chihuly glass exhibit at the Dallas Arboretum
May 07, 2012 The Dallas Arboretum is abloom through November 5 with renowned glass artist Dale Chihuly’s colorful, nature-inspired glass sculptures. My family and I visited yesterday, on opening weekend, and were wowed both by the beauty of the pieces and their careful placement in the gardens, sometimes as dramatic ...
Support Your Independent Nursery Month: The Great Outdoors
October 19, 2011It’s Support Your Independent Nursery month! Each Wednesday in October I’m posting about one of my favorite independent garden centers in the Austin area. Today I’m shining a spotlight on The Great Outdoors, located just south of the hip strip known as SoCo on South Congress Avenue. (This ...
Fish ladder & wave sculpture at Seattle’s Ballard Locks
August 28, 2011 During our family vacation in Seattle last month, we took the bus out to the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, locally known as the Ballard Locks, to watch boats of all kinds moving through the locks from the freshwater of Lake Union and Lake Washington to the saltwater ...
Laguna Gloria
June 27, 2006 Water lily at Laguna Gloria Today I visited the grounds of Laguna Gloria. Once the home of Clara Driscoll, “Savior of the Alamo” (she raised money in 1903 to keep the Alamo from being destroyed to make way for a hotel), nowadays Laguna Gloria is home to ...
