Flower power at Kew Gardens: Perennial borders and rose garden
July 10, 2018 My indulgent family and I took the Tube to Kew Gardens (officially, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew) while in London last month. I could easily have spent the whole day there, but we had only about 4 or 5 hours, so I had to pick and choose among ...
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 ...
Paris parks, pigeons, and masterpieces
June 28, 2018 After Venice earlier this June, we spent 5 nights in Paris, a city I hadn’t seen in 29 years. It is as beautiful and vibrant as I remembered. My husband took these twilight images from the top of the Arc de Triomphe, looking out over the city ...
Kirk Walden’s Hill Country garden atop Lake Austin
May 25, 2018 With this killer view of Lake Austin, many homeowners might have sodded a lawn, plunked a few pots of annuals around the pool, and called it done. But Kirk Walden, whose garden was the final stop on the recent Austin Garden Bloggers Fling tour (I photographed it ...
Screech owlets have flown the coop
May 18, 2018 The three screech owlets in our owl box fledged this week. We’ve spotted one of them in the crape myrtle — the red-hued Moltres, my daughter thinks. Its red coloring is more visible in the last photo below. (The other two chicks are named Articuno and Zapdos ...
Screech owl family – more pics!
May 14, 2018 The owl channel is playing 24/7 in our garden as the screech owl chicks grow more active. They are close to fledging, I think, and Mama and Papa Owl are kept busy night after night, bringing them tasty morsels of tree roaches, mice, moths, lizards, and whatever ...
Owlets peeking out of the owl box
May 13, 2018 The most exciting time of screech owl nesting season is here! The owlets have grown big and curious enough to climb to the doorway and look out at the world for the first time. For the past several days we’ve seen the tops of fuzzy heads in ...
Screech owl pair await nighttime owlet feeding
April 29, 2018 Yesterday, to our excitement, we spotted Lucy and Desi, our nesting screech owl pair, perched in live oak trees near the owl box. I’d suspected that their chicks had hatched and were getting bigger because Lucy was spending a lot of time in the doorway of the ...
Bluebonnets, buckeyes, and more in bloom at Wildflower Center gardens
March 25, 2018 Ahh, Texas bluebonnets! They’re turning Austin’s roadsides blue right now, and early ‘bonnets were in bloom last week at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center. I wish everyone could experience a good bluebonnet season at least once in their lives. California poppies were blooming too, their orange ...
Owl’ll be happy to see you!
March 18, 2018 For 5 years in a row, screech owls nested in our owl box every spring. Watching them raise their chicks was an annual delight. But then they stopped coming, and for the past 2 years, no owls, which bummed me out. It’s nesting season again, and I’ve ...
Succulent pots set out for spring, but too early?
February 22, 2018 A balmy breeze smelling of spring convinced me to move my cold-tender potted succulents back out into the garden over the weekend. It’s so nice to see them gracing a plant table on the deck again, after several months in which they sat packed in a wagon ...
Hungry garden visitors
February 19, 2018 High-pitched, whistling cries have filled the skies lately, alerting me to our cedar waxwing visitors. Flocking into berry-laden junipers (i.e., “cedars”), possumhaw and yaupon hollies, hackberries, and even invasive ligustrum to gorge themselves, these beautiful crested and masked birds can strip a tree clean of berries in ...
Sharing nature’s beauty in the garden of Diana Kirby
December 03, 2017 I’ve enjoyed many a visit at the garden of my good friend Diana Kirby, designer at Diana’s Designs, garden columnist at the Austin American-Statesman, and publisher of the blog Sharing Nature’s Garden. But inexplicably I’ve never done a photo tour of her lovely garden, and I’m remedying ...
Blackbird to bring good cheer
December 01, 2017 Seeing Blackbird, a new sculpture in Austin’s Republic Square Park, for the first time last week, I couldn’t help hearing Paul McCartney’s lilting voice in my head: Blackbird singing in the dead of night Take these broken wings and learn to fly A spark of hope in ...
Chihuly in the Forest and American art at Crystal Bridges Museum
November 05, 2017 While in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, last weekend, my husband and I drove to nearby Bentonville to see the remarkable collection of American art at Crystal Bridges Museum. The museum is surrounded by pleasant walking trails, and an exhibit of Chihuly glass sculptures, Chihuly in the Forest, was ...
Festive color and a little Dia de los Muertos in Lucinda Hutson’s garden
October 30, 2017 A visit to Lucinda Hutson‘s home and garden always feels like being at a party. Brightly colored walls and accessories, garden rooms with playful themes (like the mermaid garden pictured here), and Lucinda’s own excitement at showing you what’s flowering or fruiting create a feeling of festivity ...
