Diva Getaway to Fredericksburg

Copyright @ 2007 - 2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

My book club, The Literary Divas, went on our annual weekend retreat; this time to Fredericksburg, by way of the Texas Hill Country Wineries.

Of course the Divas had a great time tasting the wine. But our final goal was actually a Bed and Breakfast we'd rented together for the weekend in Fredericksburg, Texas. If you've never been to Fredericksburg you might want to treat yourself sometime. It's a charming town 77 miles west of Austin, founded by German Immigrants in 1846. In the photo below you can see the Vereins-Kirche Museum. In German "Vereins-Kirche" means "Society Church".


Originally built in 1847, it served as a town hall, a school, fort, and a multi-denominational church. Today it can be found in the center of the Marktplatz. Most weekend visitors come to Fredericksburg to shop, eat or just enjoy the history of the place.


But before we traveled to Fredericksburg the ladies wanted to visit a few vineyards along the way. Our first stop was the Texas Hills Vineyard in Johnson City, Texas.



It is set in a pleasant rural location. I admired their fields just across the road from the main building.


We also visited Lost Creek Vineyard, but by far my favorite was Becker Vineyards in Stonewall, Texas. The buildings and grounds are simply beautiful.


I imagine their gardens will look better in a few weeks...


Becker Homestead B&B and Reception Hall is available for guests to rent for weddings and other events.


Inside, the main building was large, but still managed to feel cozy.



The Tasting Room is huge. For those who do not drink there are many other items to choose from, including cooking oils and lavender products made from flowers picked on the property's very own lavender fields.


I loved the tree mural...


Before we left for our B&B in Fredericksburg we all sat on the side porch and listened to live music for a while. As I relaxed with happy friends, savoring the perfect day I felt grateful indeed. What a wonderful thing it is to have kind companions one can laugh with and to feel well enough to enjoy life, if only for a weekend.

I hope I can go back and see Becker's three acre lavender field in full bloom this summer. Sounds like it's going to be gorgeous.

Update for friends and family: My GP has referred me to an Hematologist/Oncologist for a biopsy and more testing. Hopefully I'll have a lot more answers once I get the results. ~Dawn

"Our road will be smooth and untroubled, no matter what care life may send, if we travel the pathway together and walk side by side with a friend." ~Henry Van Dyke

Copyright @ 2007 - 2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

Snow in Austin

Copyright @ 2007 - 2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

It snowed here in Austin on Feb 24th. Big fat beautiful flakes!





The snow stuck to the trees and grass.





When I arrived at my doctor's office I saw large fluffy snowballs coming out of the sky. They looked like big cotton balls:

You can see how large the flakes are in this photo...

By the time I drove back home from the school with my son the trees seemed as if they were dipped in icing.

My son ran straight into the back yard and made his first snowman. He had a great time.

It's not too big, but I thought he did a pretty good job.

Winter came down to our home one night
Quietly pirouetting in on silvery-toed slippers of snow,
And we, we were children once again.
~Bill Morgan, Jr.

Copyright @ 2007 -2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

Lunch on Lady Bird Lake

Copyright @ 2007-2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.




We had a nice Valentine's Day here in Austin, Texas last weekend. The weather was mild enough on the 14th that we went to the Hyatt for lunch then took a little stroll on Lady Bird Lake. My son was impressed by the views from the hotel's restaurant. He enjoyed watching the swans swimming by the docks...


The cabbages and kale gave the beds a touch of color along the pathways...


The weather was a bit crisp, but soon Spring flowers will fill the beds again.

Still, it was a perfect day to discover Mother Nature, and the sun, anew.

I hope you are finding joy in your garden.

"A lake is the landscape's most beautiful and expressive feature.
It is Earth's eye; looking into which the beholder measures
the depth of his own nature."
from the chapter "The Ponds" in Walden, by Henry David Thoreau

Copyright @ 2007-2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

Auld Lang Syne

Copyright © 2007-2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

Happy New Year, Fellow Bloggers! I hope you are enjoying your holiday thus far.

Unfortunately my son's Grandfather and his wife were not able to travel down from Missouri after Christmas due to bad weather at that time. We definitely missed them.

True, it's a little more difficult to have a Merry Christmas with so few people at home, but not impossible. We invited friends over for dinner during the holidays. Then luckily, we were invited to a friend's party on Christmas Eve, which was very nice. We also went to The Long Center to see The Nutcracker Ballet, which was a real treat for my son.

On Christmas morning we ate our traditional breakfast of Egg Nog French Toast, exchanged gifts and watched a movie or two together. One of my favorite's is the 1951 version of A Christmas Carol.

I sincerely hope 2010 brings good luck, happier days, better health and a lot more love for everyone.

"The roses of Love glad the garden of life, Though nurtur'd 'mid weeds dropping pestilent dew, Till Time crops the leaves with unmerciful knife, Or prunes them for ever, in Love's last adieu!" Love's Last Adieu by Lord Byron

Copyright © 2007-2010. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

Seton Hospital's Healing Garden

Copyright © 2007-2009. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

Hello Garden Bloggers,

I hope you’re enjoying the holidays. It’s getting quite chilly here in Austin, Texas. I’ve had to break out my winter coat. My goldfish appreciate the heater that keeps their water from freezing at night. I've included some photos of Seton NorthWest Hospital's Healing Garden throughout this entry as I explain what I've been up to these past two months.

[BTW: I will share some personal medical info below. If you'd prefer not to read such things you may want to move on to an alternative entry at this point. ~D]

As some of you may know I had a biopsy to rule out Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC) on October 14th. Happily the lab results were fine and apparently I am cancer-free, for which I am very thankful.

That should have been the end of the story. Unfortunately, I had an allergic reaction to the adhesive in the biospy dressing and lost all of my skin surrounding the biopsy (rather like a third-degree burn). Since she was a dermatologist & an MD, I trusted the doctor who did the biopsy to treat me. I knew on the 10th day post-op when she said, “Your wound looks no better. I’ll see you in 2 weeks,” that I needed a second opinion.


Thankfully, my wonderful internist, Dr. Debra Dollar, took one look at my wound, saw it was necrotic and knew what to do: She sent me directly to the NW Seton Hospital’s Wound Clinic. I've been going there 3x's per week for wound therapy since 10/29/09 and will continue to do so until I’m completely healed.


As you might imagine, I’ve learned more about wounds than I ever desired. Oddly enough, a flower-bed metaphor works well in comparison. In gardening you must first remove any dead plants (necrotic tissue), before you can build good soil (granulation tissue). Gardeners use fertilizers and soil supplements; while wound therapists use calcium alginate (made from algae) on the wounds to help stimulate healing and silver to keep out harmful bacteria. And, like a good gardener prepares a bed before planting flowers, the same goes for growing the epidermis. A wound patient must go through all the proper, sometimes painful, therapy phases before total healing is realized. Right now I’m happy to be in the collagen phase of healing. Hopefully I’ll be completely healed by Christmas.




Sorry if this is all TMI. I've hesitated to share this story on my blog. Yet I do hope someone might learn from my experience. I wish I'd known two months ago what I do now: Not all doctors can treat certain kinds of wounds or even identify necrotic tissue. If I’d been sent to the Wound Clinic as soon as my wound had developed I would have healed in a fraction of the time and avoided all sorts of pain & unpleasantness. The moral is: if you're feeling uncomfortable definitely get a second opinion; it might save your life.

That said, I’d like to thank Dr. Debra Dollar and the wound therapists at NW Seton Hospital’s Wound Clinic. I’m very grateful for your help.

"Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being. Each of us owes deepest thanks to those who have rekindled this light." Albert Schweitzer

Copyright © 2007-2009. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

Spring in October

Copyright © 2007-2009. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.

The rains have started falling and the drought may be slightly on the wane here in Austin, but as Robin at Getting Grounded explains in her entry Recapping the Summer from Hell 2009, it will take a whole lot of heavy showers before our lakes are full again. Still, my garden is finally happy after a long torturous summer. The sweltering 100+ temps started in May this year and stole spring from us. Now the cooler temperatures, wet weather and colorful flowers make me feel like spring has arrived in October.

This is the first year my Senna (Cassia?) flowered well. When I planted it several seasons ago it was little more than a twig. This summer the caterpillars clung to the foliage and butterflies drop in for an occasional sip at the blossoms...



Since space is at a premium I'm attempting to train it rather flat against the stark white brick wall...




The blooms are so luscious and plump, it's no wonder the butterflies can't resist them...



The drought scorched most of my groundcover this summer so I tried covering my mulch with some purslane (Portulaca oleracea). It flourished in the heat and the honey bees approved of all the flowers.


Mexican bush sage (Salvia leucantha), Bush Daisy (Euryops) and Prostrate Rosemary (Rosemarinus officinalis) are blooming all at once today...

This butterfly bush (Buddleia) is surprisingly attractive to humming birds as well as the butterflies.

Here's the view of the front flower bed from the lavender-skirted birdbath...

My basket of begonias looks so healthy you'd never guess the scorching summer heat ever bothered them...


Inside, this pink orchid is blooming in my breakfast window for the 3rd year in a row...



Mariah, my Siamese Cat, has completely recovered from her run-in with steroids. Here she seems to wonder when we're adding a screened-in porch for her bird-viewing pleasure.

From the window she can see the flower bed I've begun planting in the back garden.

I removed one of the dwarf yaupon holly under our family room window and am in the process of replacing it with salvia, bulbine and assorted flowering plants. I plan on replacing the remaining yaupon as well with hummingbird-friendly flowers like my new Salvia coccinea 'Coral nymph', seen here looking extremely pleased with itself...

Finally, I'd like to share a little good news: As some of you may know my son's former one-on-one school assistant inexplicably quit her job without giving notice. She just didn't show up on the first day of school this fall, which left the administrator's scrambling to hire someone and my son with substitute aides for the past month. I was very proud of him for coping so well despite the upheaval; not always easy for someone in the autistic spectrum. The good news is the school finally hired a nice lady for the job last week. I met her today and she seems like a lovely person. We're all breathing a collective sigh of relief, hoping things will get back to what passes for normal in our lives. Whew!

And with that, here's wishing all of you a very contented Autumn Gardening Season. If you get tired of your rain, please send it here, we're enjoying every drop in Austin.

"The best kind of rain, of course, is a cozy rain. This is the kind the anonymous medieval poet makes me remember, the rain that falls on a day when you'd just as soon stay in bed a little longer, write letters or read a good book by the fire, take early tea with hot scones and jam and look out the streaked window with complacency." ~Susan Allen Toth, England For All Seasons

Copyright © 2007-2009. Suburban Wildlife Garden. All Rights Reserved.