I won! A major award! Ok, it was just two wristbands for a native-plants garden tour yesterday, and all I had to do was be the second commenter on a post by the Statesman's garden blogger, but hey, it's always fun to win something.
I asked Angela, who has only recently embarked on her own garden odyssey, to accompany me, and luckily she said yes. She came over to drink a smoothie for stamina and join me in hitting a few of the six stops on the tour.
The first two gardens we hit were in central-west Austin, and they were great; really lovely and creative and impressive, and totally achievable if you had like a bazillion dollars and a crack team of landscape architects and engineers.
It happens that I don't have any of those things at the moment, so while it was cool to see those yards, I was way more inspired by the yard we saw that had a far less manicured look.
It too was a planned, professional project, but it seemed like something we could do (at least on a smaller scale and over a very, very long time), and its messy exuberance appealed to me. Plus the owners get major props for labeling their plants.
Part of the deal was that we got free admission to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, which I had never visited. I liked it a lot; I would love to go back when I'm not already a little bit gardened-out.
We missed peak bluebonnet by a few weeks, but there were still plenty of blooms everywhere. The firewheels are out in force right now, and Angela had the best sighting of the day--a clutch of Red Hat Ladies.
And then we got home and of course my yard looked pathetic and piecemeal in comparison to everything I'd seen and I wanted to set it on fire, but that's okay. I don't have much in the way of money or talent, but I do have a little bit of time.