Twin fawns hiding in the garden
June 16, 2021 Opening the front door, I spotted four oversized ears and two white-spotted bodies — twin fawns hidden by their mother in the raised bed by the driveway. Framed against shiny, blue ceramic balls, they made an irresistible photo op. I quietly staked out a spot on the ...
Bee balm, daylilies, and fawn season
June 13, 2021 I’m grateful for the past two weeks of off-and-on rain, which helped my garden rebound from the epic February freeze. Early June may be hot and muggy now, but the garden is full and flowery. And the driveway border is back, baby! ‘Peter’s Purple’ bee balm (Monarda ...
Glowing front-yard gardens, plus Fearless Gardening winner
January 16, 2021 On twilight walks around the neighborhood I love coming to this house, the home of neighbor friends who deck out their front-yard garden with hanging globes of blue and white for Christmas every year. I’m in no hurry for them to take them down. The lights add ...
Bigtooth maples and more fall foliage at the Wildflower Center, part 2
November 19, 2020 Did a few bigtooth maples from Lost Maples Park lose their way and end up at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center? It sure looked that way last week, when I spotted pumpkin-spice trees in the Family Garden. This is part 2 of my tour. Big, colorful ...
Autumn comes in yellow and purple
September 30, 2020 The yellow spider lilies (Lycoris aurea) are up 3 weeks earlier than last year, perhaps due to our cooler than usual early fall, and I am here for it. Each afternoon the sunlight slants under the live oaks and hits the lilies like a spotlight, an effect ...
A critter season like Where’s Waldo?
July 27, 2020 This summer I’m living a Where’s Waldo? book. Every time I step into the front yard I can count on a fawn and myself mutually scaring the bejeesus out of each other. I’ll obliviously walk by or close a car door or pull out the hose, not ...
Yosemite National Park, grand temple of nature
July 14, 2020 An epic vista, including El Capitan on the left and Half Dome in the distance, greets you at the Tunnel View pullout. Half Dome. El Capitan. Tuolumne Meadows. Yosemite Falls. The names of Yosemite’s majestic granite walls, grassy leas, and thundering waterfalls are more familiar to many ...
Deer noshing on my dianella
June 26, 2020 Getting into my car last week, I was surprised to see a doe walking steadily toward me, ambling down the driveway like she owned the place. Did she have a fawn stashed nearby, I wondered? (I saw twin fawns in the garden soon after, so maybe.) I ...
Beebalm, skullcap, and more wild creatures
May 27, 2020 The early summer flowers are strutting their stuff, so come along for a virtual tour! Here’s dazzling ‘Peter’s Purple’ monarda (Monarda fistulosa ‘Peter’s Purple’) in the driveway bed. It was a breezy day. Looking toward the neighbors’ house and their fast-growing Yucca rostrata In the shady island bed ...
Fawning over this baby
May 22, 2020 A young visitor dropped by my garden yesterday. Actually I think she was here a couple of days ago, although I didn’t see her that day. I was moving around the side of the house and heard a startled rustling in the sedge and thought I might ...
End-of-summer garden
October 02, 2019 Austin is eager to bid a less-than-fond farewell to summer after a record-breaking hot and dry September. I can already see a change in the light, and my garden got a bit of rain last week. With any luck, by next week temperatures will finally drop 10 ...
Via Libre, a free-spirited garden along the freeway
July 25, 2019 Moss green doors sparkle with tin milagros — an inviting gateway into a garden courtyard. Many people wouldn’t consider buying a house sandwiched between MoPac expressway, a multi-lane highway with freight trains chugging down the center median, and its neighborhood feeder road. But Cynthia Deegan and her ...
Deer-Resistant Design book features my garden, other Austin gardens!
July 19, 2019 In October of 2017, Seattle-area designer, author, and speaker Karen Chapman came to Austin to present for my Garden Spark series and to photograph gardens for a new book she was working on. That book has just been published: Deer-Resistant Design: Fence-Free Gardens that Thrive Despite the ...
More melanistic deer and a Texas-sized slug
July 01, 2019 Driving at dusk through my northwest Austin neighborhood requires a sharp eye for unwary deer ambling or darting across the street. Last evening, my husband and I spotted the usual groups of does and fawns as well as a few rare melanistic deer too. Their dusky coats ...
Hoofed visitor
May 27, 2019 Stepping onto our front porch the other day, we spotted a shy visitor who wasn’t quite prepared to come all the way to the front door, although she was close. A doe was nosing around in the sedge lawnette, seemingly noshing on the cut “hay” from its ...
Fawn hiding in plain sight
May 08, 2019 Walking down the driveway to the mailbox yesterday, I passed not two feet from a tiny fawn curled up on the gravel garden path atop a cushion of green sedge. She didn’t move a muscle, holding completely still in hopes I wouldn’t see her, and I played ...
