Day of the Dead in Lucinda’s colorful garden
October 27, 2022 Lucinda Hutson welcomed me and Teri Speight, my recent Garden Spark speaker, into her garden last week to see it decorated for Day of the Dead. This is a treat I look forward to all year. Lucinda’s garden and purple cottage always glow with color in October, ...
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 ...
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 ...
Gathering spaces in Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 2
May 02, 2022 In my last post I hope I wowed you — as I was wowed — by the colorful wildflower meadow and textural spiky-soft shade garden of Ruthie Burrus. If you missed it, check out Part 1 of my visit to Ruthie’s West Austin garden. Today we’ll explore ...
Wildflower-palooza at Ruthie Burrus Garden, part 1
April 30, 2022 I first photographed Ruthie Burrus’s garden 8 years ago, when she emailed an invitation to come visit. I was wowed by her wildflower meadow, textural foliage garden at the front door, giant rainwater cisterns, charmingly rustic garden haus, and skyline view. Here’s her garden haus in spring ...
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 ...
Spring garden party at Lucinda’s purple casita
April 14, 2022 If I’m lucky, springtime means an invitation to Lucinda Hutson‘s festive garden. And last weekend I felt lucky indeed to be invited to her purple casita on a perfect spring day. Out front, pansies were still somehow hanging on, despite recent warm temperatures. Ready to take over, ...
Houston Botanic Garden edibles, water wall, and end-of-winter gardens
April 04, 2022 In early March, on a quick trip to Houston, I returned to Houston Botanic Garden for an end-of-winter visit. HBG is still a new garden — it opened in September 2020; click for my visit — and the culinary garden with its massive, aqua-tiled water wall is ...
The yellow glow of late fall
December 02, 2021 Cool, blue-sky weather has me spending more time in the garden, having friends over, and tinkering with planting beds. It’s kind of glowing out there. Why? Yellow is the color of fall in my garden, starting with the wonderful forsythia sage (Salvia madrensis), which lights up the ...
Lucinda Hutson’s colorful Day of the Dead garden
October 25, 2021 Austin author Lucinda Hutson‘s garden blazes with color every day of the year. But come October, for Day of the Dead, she kicks it up a big notch. Yellow and orange marigolds glow from every pot, mingling with hibiscus, coral vine, and roses in sherbet hues, all ...
A week of bloom spikes and rain
May 22, 2021 We had such prolonged rain this week that I lost track of how many inches it came to — 4 inches for sure if not 5. The garden responded to the extra water and mild May temps with a profusion of growth, including bloom spikes on yuccas, ...
Still cleaning up after the freeze but making progress
March 16, 2021 In the 3 weeks since the Big Freeze, there’s been much gnashing of teeth and grim side-eye given to the cold-toasted garden. There’s been escape. But mostly there’s been a slow acceptance of the changed garden and daily efforts at cutting it all back, removing plants that ...
Japanese maple puts on another excellent show
December 17, 2020 The show is over now, but during the past two weeks I watched the Japanese maple at the front corner of the house blush redder and redder. Looking up through the leaves was like gazing through stained glass. I’m sure I looked odd staring up at the ...
David’s top 10 plants in our garden
August 31, 2020 First Tamara’s husband, David, guest-posted about his favorite flowers on his wife’s blog Chickadee Gardens. Then Loree at Danger Garden interviewed her non-gardening husband, Andrew, about his top ten favorite plants (not limited to flowers since her garden is foliage-centric), and included his haiku-like descriptions of each ...
Late summer stars of the garden
August 26, 2020 Like a starfish clinging to a rock, this soap aloe (Aloe maculata) I stuck in a pie-pan planter has grown more beautifully than I expected. It seems to love the crevice life. Snaking stems of ghost plant (Graptopetalum paraguayense) add their flower shapes to the composition. A ...
