February 10, 2007Bad news for garden-tour enthusiasts in Austin this year. The Garden Conservancy’s Open Days schedule for 2007 shows no Austin date. In years past, Open Days Austin has been held in October, and in 2006 I photographed all six gardens on the tour and gave a blog tour …

February 09, 2007 This is how the foundation bed looked last fall. Lantana, Mexican bush sage, Lindheimer muhly grass, and skeletonleaf goldeneye combined for a great show—but only in one season. Last Sunday I tore much of it out. Sooner than expected, I found a ‘Wonderful’ pomegranate, the sought-after focal …

February 07, 2007 “Pomegranate House” For the west-facing bed by my front door, which I tore up last weekend in my craving for something less ordinary, I’ve decided on a pomegranate. Punica granatum ‘Wonderful’, to be exact. ‘Wonderful’ sounds, well, wonderful. A small tree that can be kept at 8 …

February 05, 2007 Looking west from my front porch two nights ago, I noticed a beautiful sunset behind a filigree of bare trees. Yesterday I enjoyed perfect gardening weather—about 65 degrees, sunny, no wind. I dug in the front garden all day, tearing out a perfectly good sapling redbud and …

February 03, 2007 My thanks to Apartment Therapy, an urban-living design blog in New York City, for their nice words about my ice-storm photos. When editor Matthew Noiseux contacted me to ask permission to repost one of them, and I visited his site to see what it was about, I …

February 01, 2007 Emerging heartleaf skullcap foliage It’s February, and I haven’t cut back last summer’s foliage yet. I’m feeling antsy about it. Like many gardeners who want something to look at in the winter (and provide shelter and food for birds), I leave frost-bitten foliage alone for several months …

January 25, 2007 Roly-poly Buddhas, fleshy succulents, and spiny cacti mingle in towering, rusted-steel saucers and planters, the signature look at Big Red Sun, an eastside Austin nursery where East meets West. I get the Big Red Sun blues (with a nod to songwriter Lucinda Williams) every time I visit …

January 24, 2007 The garden blogger Down Under, Stuart at Gardening Tips ‘n’ Ideas, has piloted a world-map garden-blog directory that I think is fantastic. Designed to help people find garden bloggers in their “neighborhood,” the map allows you to click on a country to see where bloggers are located …

January 23, 2007 Over at Garden Rant, a fierce defense of painted garden furniture (indeed, garden furniture in general) has sprung up after Elizabeth ranted about magazine advice like painting a bench to match your hydrangeas. As it turned out, quite a few readers love slapping paint on furniture to …

January 19, 2007 Split limb on wax myrtle We haven’t seen the sun in 5 days and don’t expect to until Tuesday. We’ve been just below or just above freezing for nearly as many days. Until yesterday, a half-inch of ice weighed down the garden that was responding to last-week’s …

January 17, 2007 Hymenoxys (four-nerve daisy) The icicles are long and dagger-like on the eaves, but they are melting. Drip, drip, drip—we can hear it indoors. When I stepped gingerly into the front garden this morning to poke around, evidence of melting and refreezing overnight was written on the plants …

January 16, 2007 Icicles on the kids’ playhouse transformed it into a fairy-tale gingerbread house—for about two minutes until they gleefully knocked them down and sampled a few. After 4 inches of gully-washing rain fell on Saturday morning, we drove to Houston for the weekend to watch my husband and …

January 11, 2007 Ashe juniper—at this time of year, the “mountain cedar” is on many Austinites’ Most Wanted lists. An editorial in the Austin American-Statesman today sums up the agony of cedar fever sufferers. I joined their ranks in 1999, five years after moving to Austin. It took a second …

January 10, 2007 Purple coneflower I promised myself to be more observant of my garden, so I went out a little while ago to take a look. Here is a sampling of what’s blooming in the front garden. These pictures may make it seem as if the garden is awash …