Contemporary re-use in landscaping at San Antonio’s Pearl
June 18, 2024 The old Pearl Brewery in San Antonio is today a shopping/dining complex along the River Walk, with green, landscaped public plazas. It’s called Pearl. We made time to poke around at Pearl during an April visit to the Alamo City. (Here’s Part 1 of that visit.) Historic ...
Happy, colorful courtyards at The Lincoln Marfa
September 18, 2023 I stayed at The Lincoln, a boutique hotel of 14 “unique homes” at a century-old property, when I visited Marfa a couple weeks ago. A bright yellow door and orange cosmos flowers offered a cheerful welcome as I rolled my bag to Unit 7, passing a gigantic, ...
Running through Marathon, Texas
September 03, 2023 On the way home from a trip to far West Texas in late July, my friend and I swung through tiny Marathon, Texas, for lunch. Fifty miles east of Marfa and 50 miles north of Big Bend National Park, Marathon is known as the gateway to remote ...
Grizzlies and geysers at Yellowstone, part 1
August 13, 2023 As we drove toward the East Entrance of Yellowstone National Park, I twisted my telephoto lens onto my Nikon and held the camera in my lap. Twenty-three years earlier, on a late afternoon drive in Yellowstone, we’d seen a grizzly sow and twin cubs dash across the ...
Marfa love affair
August 05, 2023 Last week I made my first real visit to Marfa, the tiny (population 1,750) and improbable art mecca in far West Texas. I’d passed through Marfa once before, at the tail end of a spring break trip to drought-bleached Big Bend with small children, and I confess ...
Hotel Magdalena courtyard evokes Hill Country canyon
October 06, 2022 After an all-day meeting on South Congress recently, I strolled down Music Lane to Hotel Magdalena, a boutique hotel that opened in 2020. I’d been wanting to see the place since learning that Ten Eyck Landscape Architects did the landscaping and Lake|Flato Architects designed the hotel itself ...
Modern courtyard garden at South Congress Hotel
November 20, 2015 Last weekend I met a friend for drinks at the beautiful new South Congress Hotel bar. (A word of advice: never, ever order the Pink Flamingo, which tasted exactly like a burning tire. After a few grimace-inducing sips, I deemed it undrinkable — my friend agreed — ...
Ducking around in Memphis
August 01, 2015 Our last stop on our cultural tour of the South (a family road trip in mid-July that began in Austin and included New Orleans, Atlanta, and Charlotte, North Carolina) was Memphis, Tennessee — Home of the Blues and the Birthplace of Rock-and-Roll. We spent two nights at ...
It’s not hard to enjoy the Big Easy
July 29, 2015 If you want to feel that you’ve traveled to a foreign city without leaving the country, visit New Orleans and stay in the historic French Quarter. We made the 8-hour drive from Austin a couple of weeks ago — our first stop on a family road trip ...
Drive-By Gardens: South Congress Avenue in Austin
November 24, 2014 This drive-by is really a walk-by. I was on South Congress Avenue on Sunday afternoon, the center of the funky-hip Austin universe, enjoying a blue-sky, 80-degree day with my family. Fall, winter, and spring days like this are what sustain me through Austin’s broiling summers. When my ...
Warm up in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
January 07, 2014 Revisiting my trip to Beijing proved so enjoyable on a cold winter day that I’m continuing the travel theme. Next up: Mexico! In March 2006, just one month after I started this blog, my husband and I traveled to San Miguel de Allende in central Mexico. I ...
Garden writers convene in the desert for Tucson GWA Symposium
October 21, 2012 A few short years ago I didn’t think of myself as a garden writer. I was a garden blogger, plain and simple. But then I started getting offered, and learned to pursue, paid writing assignments, and now I have a book coming out, a fact that still ...
White Gate Inn’s charming garden and goodbye Asheville Fling!
June 03, 2012 While not an official part of the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Asheville, North Carolina, the garden of the White Gate Inn, just down the street from our hotel, was suggested as a must-see if we had any spare time. So one morning I got up early ...
South Congress afternoon
August 26, 2009 Funky if increasingly gentrified South Congress Avenue lured me into the heat one recent afternoon. I only did a bit of window shopping, but that’s half the fun on this must-see Austin street lined with independently owned, only-in-Austin stores. Pictured above, a vision of coolness on a ...