Enjoying fall color and a mellow garden
December 07, 2022 By the time I hang red Christmas balls from the agave’s spines, the Japanese maple finally blushes red too. Fall comes late to Central Texas, but I’ll take it, even at Christmastime. Last week was peak color for the Acer palmatum. Today, shriveled tan leaves cling to ...
Spotlight around the garden
November 09, 2022 Before Halloween I took a few photos of whatever caught my eye, starting with the whale’s tongue agave in the tractor-rim planter. Hello, gorgeous! Somebody is watching me from the far end of the Berkeley sedge lawn. Hello, deer. Oh, and the Wheeler’s sotol that replaced the ...
Mellow-yellowing into fall, but the garden still has bite
October 10, 2022 October rolls around, mellowing out the Texas garden. At last, it’s a pleasure to be outside again, noticing how the moonlight-yellow variegation on the whale’s tongue agave glows in the afternoon light. The weather is gentler. But the garden still has bite, as shown in serrated leaves ...
Explosion of oxblood lilies and datura
September 07, 2022 I vamoosed from the Texas heat last week for the drier, cooler, high-desert climate of Santa Fe. It was a great trip, but the whole time I was away I fretted that I was missing one of my late-summer favorites at home: the eruption of oxblood lilies ...
Have we outlasted the heat-wave summer?
August 31, 2022 What a summer this has been for Austin. Hot as Hades, rainless and parched for months and months. And then, finally, flooding rains in mid-August drenched parts of the city — I got 4.75 inches over a few days, although friends in South and West Austin got ...
Hot summer garden before it got super hot
June 29, 2022 I returned yesterday from the Madison Garden Bloggers Fling, and I’m already missing Wisconsin’s cooler summer climate. But dark clouds greeted me when I got home and then RAIN! An inch fell on my parched and heat-stressed garden, refreshing everything and sparing me from having to do ...
New pipe planters create a focal point in front garden
June 20, 2022 Me and my pipe planters! I have three new pipe planters in my front garden, which I installed last fall (pre-house painting) but never got around to sharing, thanks to all the New England-down-to-Virginia travel posts I slathered on the blog. (My fellow heat-wave sufferers, click the ...
In the night garden
June 06, 2022 The night garden in early summer glows with spires of creamy, bell-shaped blossoms. ‘Bright Edge’ yucca sends up these towers of flowers, perfect for a moonlight garden. Paleleaf yucca (Y. pallida) gets in on the act too, sending up its own tall flower spike over powder-blue leaves ...
My garden is a fawn nursery
May 27, 2022 Suddenly they’re everywhere. The deer? No, they’re always here, passing through my garden and neighbors’ yards at dusk, at night, in early morning. But starting in mid-May, the does give birth. They stash their tiny fawns in a hiding place — under a bush, behind a potted ...
Flowering vines, cacti, and hesperaloes in my garden
May 09, 2022 Early May is giving me end-of-May vibes this year — that is to say, near 100 degrees F and humid. You know…full-on Texas summer. And despite the blanket of Gulf humidity, we’re still not getting any real rain. Well, thankfully the plants don’t seem to mind yet ...
Spring glow-up in my Texas garden
April 20, 2022 Ah, April. It’s a beautiful month for Austin gardens — if you can ignore the live oak pollen catkins hanging off every surface and piling up underfoot. Which I can (just barely). Let’s take a spin through the garden to see what’s blooming this month. These photos ...
Comings and goings in the spring garden
March 30, 2022 She ran late by a week or two, but Spring finally made up her mind and sprung. Last week ornamental trees like Mexican plum (Prunus mexicana) flushed into flower as live oaks overhead began their annual mass shedding of “evergreen” leaves. It’s autumn and spring all at ...
I painted my brick house white for a fresh look
March 12, 2022 Let me join the throngs of bloggers writing about painting dated brick houses white or off-white. After years of mulling it over, we took the leap of painting our brick a few weeks ago, and I’m loving the fresh, clean, more modern look. Before Since moving into ...
Screech owl visitor
February 16, 2022 A few days ago I looked up and noticed a screech owl hanging out in the door of our owl box. First sighting of the season! At this time of year, males are scouting for nesting sites, and perhaps that’s what this little guy was doing, when ...