For two years now, my fellow bloggers Diana Kirby and Laura Wills and I have been planning a big event for garden bloggers called Garden Bloggers Fling. This weekend is when it finally happens — rain or shine!

Garden Bloggers Fling is 3-1/2 days of private and public garden touring, plus socializing and networking with garden bloggers from across North American and Europe, hosted in a different city each year. We have 92 bloggers coming to Austin — many are already here — and we can’t wait to share our beautiful city and its gardens with them.

We’ve attended to hundreds of details to create a fun event for everyone. We even have Austin Fling cookies! (made by Hayley Cakes & Cookies)

Thirteen private gardens will be included on our tour. My own is one of them, which has meant months of preparation to shine it up. To my delight, three Texas sotols are getting in on the action by sending up tall bloom spikes. They’re not quite in bloom yet, but they should be interesting to bloggers who aren’t able to grow these fabulous xeric plants.

Today, taking a mental and physical break from Fling planning and garden prep, I joined up with English bloggers Michelle Chapman of VegPlotting and Barbara Segall of The Garden Post to show them around Austin. After lunch at Hula Hut, we climbed nearby Mount Bonnell for a bird’s-eye view of Lake Austin.

We made a beeline for a prickly pear in glorious yellow bloom alongside the path…

…where we found a bee already there, wallowing in the pollen-laden center, alongside two beetles having a liaison of their own.

While looking at an informational sign about native plants at Mount Bonnell, I was surprised and amused to see that one of my photos had been used to illustrate Texas mountain laurel. Ironically, it was at Mount Bonnell that I first laid eyes on Texas mountain laurel and fell in love with its grapey scent during a house-hunting visit in early spring of 1994. Those trees helped sell me on Austin! And now one of my photos is helping to sell future Austinites on our natural beauty. Talk about coming full circle.

Next I took my English visitors to spring-fed Barton Springs Pool to show them “the soul of Austin.”

We took off our shoes and cooled our heels in the chilly water. It was lovely. (If any other blogger reading this plans to go, be aware the pool is closed on Thursdays all day for cleaning.)

While driving back to the hotel, we were talking about Piet Oudolf’s famous Lurie Garden in Chicago, when Michelle said something rather eye-opening. She said, “People work so hard to make Oudolf-style gardens, and you’ve got it just growing on the roadside.” I glanced over at the grassy median studded with native wildflowers and said, “You’re absolutely right.” I may never look at the verge the same way again.

See? This is what I love about the Fling: fresh insights and personal connections with fellow gardeners from around the world. Plus a whole lotta garden visiting.

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