The whimsical woodland garden of Ellen Ash: Capital Region Garden Bloggers Fling
July 11, 2017 Although the tree-shaded entrance to this Great Falls, Virginia, garden was elegant and restrained, I knew the owner would be a gardener with a sense of humor. How? Because at the driveway’s end I spotted, atop a pilaster, a statue wearing actual sunglasses. It was the first ...
Lucinda’s Dia de los Muertos garden
November 01, 2016 My friend Lucinda Hutson celebrates Dia de los Muertos like no one else I know. Her colorful, Mexican-inspired home and garden in the Rosedale neighborhood of central Austin grows even more vibrant for Day of the Dead, and inside she stages elaborate table displays and beautiful altars ...
Festive spring at Lucinda Hutson’s purple cottage
April 08, 2016 Many times over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of visiting Lucinda Hutson‘s purple cottage in the Rosedale neighborhood of central Austin. It’s always a riot of flowers and festive decor. On Tuesday I stopped by to visit again and am so glad I did. Butter-yellow blossoms ...
Splendor in the grass at Rhone Street Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 07, 2014 The 3rd and final day of touring on the recent Garden Bloggers Fling in Portland, Oregon, dawned cool and misty — exactly what Portland should be, at least according to heat-shunning me. After two days of unusual heat, I was thrilled, even when it started to thunder ...
Checking out Chickadee Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
August 03, 2014 The Garden Bloggers Fling takes you to so many wonderful gardens that it would be understandable if you simply overloaded by the end of the day, unable to appreciate one more. Thankfully I find new gardens energizing, and when our bus pulled up at Portland blogger Tamara’s ...
Old Germantown Gardens: Portland Garden Bloggers Fling
July 20, 2014 The first private garden on the Portland Garden Bloggers Fling tour last weekend was, at 2 acres, large enough to accommodate our entire group of approximately 80 bloggers. Old Germantown Gardens, created over 23 years by Bruce Wakefield and Jerry Grossnickle, is a masterpiece of a garden ...
Drive-By Gardens: Cottage garden color explosion in Houston Heights
March 31, 2014 Go see the flower garden on Peddie Street, my sister urged when I told her I’d be in Houston for a garden tour. It was the same advice I’d recently gotten from a Digging reader, who told me the garden on Peddie was not to be missed, ...
Tanzanian safari: Tent camp on the Serengeti, crocodiles, and soaring over volcanoes
January 14, 2014 We made several more game drives while visiting the western corridor of Serengeti National Park (June 2007), seeing many, many elephants — and I took so many photos of them that my family got elephant-fatigue when viewing them later. I’ll only show you a few, and not ...
Tanzanian safari: Serengeti National Park and sunrise hot-air balloon ride
January 13, 2014 We left the Maasai village (June 2007 trip to Tanzania) and got back on the dirt road heading to Serengeti National Park. The drive in our open-roofed cars was long, dusty, and jolting. Open grasslands gave way to a savanna with flat-topped acacias and occasional spring-fed watering ...
Tanzanian safari: Ngorongoro Crater
January 12, 2014 After our visit to Mto wa Mbu (June 2007 trip to Tanzania), we returned to the lodge for lunch and then hopped back in the vehicles for the drive to Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The road climbed, the air cooled, and when we stopped at an overlook to ...
Tanzanian safari: Elephants, lions, and baobabs in Tarangire National Park
January 10, 2014 On our second full day in Tanzania (June 2007), we drove to Tarangire National Park, a 1,000-square-mile preserve located 75 miles away from Arusha. On the drive there, my face was pressed to the window, and I grew increasingly excited to see zebras and gazelles grazing in ...
Hillside magic in the Nichols Garden: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
August 06, 2013 Our 4th stop on the final day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was my absolute favorite of the Fling: the Ann Nichols Garden. Gorgeous plants, beautifully combined and meticulously maintained, adorn a series of intimate garden rooms on a hillside lot. A subtropical front garden ...
California living in the Testa-Vought Garden: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
July 26, 2013 Our 5th stop on the 2nd day of the San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling was the Bernard Trainor-designed Testa-Vought Garden in Palo Alto. Out front, a contemporary gravel garden greets you, but the real excitement begins when you enter a walled courtyard and begin discovering a series ...
Cocktail party at Shirley Watts’ Garden: San Francisco Garden Bloggers Fling
July 12, 2013 Early arrivals to San Francisco for the recent Garden Bloggers Fling were invited to a cocktail party at designer and artist Shirley Watts‘ home in Alameda. Shirley graciously opened her home and garden to about 50 complete strangers, and we eagerly trooped through her kitchen and into ...
Springtime visit to the Garden of Good and Evil
May 03, 2013 Last weekend Lori, a gardener in southwest Austin who blogs at The Gardener of Good and Evil, hosted a meet-up of local garden bloggers. It was my second visit. I’d seen her lovely garden three years ago and posted about it then. Lori loves roses, and in ...
Lucinda Hutson’s purple cottage, cantina garden, and Viva Tequila!
April 24, 2013 Lucinda Hutson’s festive home and garden in AustinMy friend Lucinda Hutson invited me over to her purple cottage on Sunday to see her angel’s trumpets in bloom, plus all the rest of her exuberant, flowery garden. Lighting up her quiet Rosedale neighborhood street like a fiesta in ...
