August 30, 2016 The last two days of our Southwestern road trip took us through West Texas and the surprisingly green and scenic Davis Mountains, where we visited McDonald Observatory. A land of big sky, low humidity, and dark nights is the perfect place for gazing at stars and planets …

August 30, 2016 With the 100th birthday of the U.S. National Park Service this month, I’m pleased we were able to visit two National Parks on our recent road trip: Mesa Verde in Colorado and Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico. We’d visited before with our eldest when he was little …

August 28, 2016 Colorado’s Rocky Mountains have been our summer playground many times, but we’ve always stayed on the eastern side along the Front Range, or in north-central Breckenridge, never on the western side. To see what we’ve been missing, earlier this month we rented a house in the Durango …

August 26, 2016 Yesterday the U.S. National Park Service celebrated its centennial. My family and I love visiting national parks, and during our recent road trip through New Mexico and up to Durango, Colorado, we couldn’t pass up the chance to see a new one (to us): Mesa Verde National …

August 25, 2016 The day after gazing at Georgia O’Keeffe’s landscapes and monumental flower paintings at the museum in Santa Fe, we drove north through the monsoon-greened high desert of northern New Mexico, the landscape the artist adopted as her own. As soon as I saw it, that was my …

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 …

August 22, 2016 Two weeks ago today we drove west on a spontaneously planned, cutting-it-close-with-the-first-day-of-school, two-week road trip through West Texas, northern New Mexico, and western Colorado. One of our early stops was Santa Fe, New Mexico, a beautiful old city we once regularly visited but hadn’t seen in 16 …

August 16, 2016 Surely August will be our last worst month here in central Texas. It can’t possibly remain blisteringly hot and humid through September, can it? Yes, it can, and it probably will, but that’s why I love agaves, yuccas, prickly pear, and other tough plants. They breeze through …

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 …

August 08, 2016 As the Death Star sizzles for weeks on end — 100 degrees F and no rain in sight — it might seem as if all the garden can do is endure. But no! Plants that put on their best show in the heat of summer, even a …

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 …

August 04, 2016 Each year at Garden Bloggers Fling, there’s at least one garden that moves me deeply, that creates a lasting mood and feels like an extension of the gardener him- or herself. At this year’s Fling in Minneapolis, that garden was the creation of Wouterina De Raad. (As …

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 …

August 02, 2016 At the end of day one of the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Minneapolis, we visited 3 gardens connected by the gardeners who tend them: Noerenberg Memorial Gardens; the home garden of Noerenberg’s horticultural supervisor and curator, Arla Carmichiel, and her husband, Steve Kelley; and the display …