Features

Aqua Blue Pots in the landscape and staggered on the side of a hill, was not my idea, but my bride, the person who pops up on my phone as Jan My Love Winter. This is the color I have avoided like the plague for most of my life. To modify the French phrase this project was going to be my ‘Peace’ de Resistance. You see Jan is a gifted and natural plant groomer when it comes to our mixed containers, so making ‘Peace’ is the goal.

I’ll admit, I had to look up Ukraine to find it on the map when this needless war began. I knew little about the customs, the religion, the ethnicities of Ukraine — and really, in the final analysis, none of that really mattered.

After three months in its new brick-and-mortar location, Fortis Therapy Center celebrated its opening with a ribbon cutting, sponsored by the Dripping Springs Chamber of Commerce.

Swallowtails were early at The Garden Guy’s house this year. Thank goodness I had Superbena verbenas in full bloom. It is as if they had been given the task of announcing the arrival of spring and the butterfly season. March 22, I photographed an Eastern Tiger Swallowtail on Superbana Royale Chambray verbena.

Texas was hardest hit by the polio outbreaks of the 1940s and early ’50s. As scientists raced to find a vaccine, local officials, celebrities and ordinary people came together to raise funding for the desperately-needed research.

Small children fear darkness, crying at the possibility of bad guys hiding under the bed or monsters in the closet. These imaginings are usually erased by hugs, reassurances and under-thebed inspections. When my boys were small, I used room spray to banish bad guys and monsters. In some cases, an invitation to spend the night in mom’s and dad’s room calms the frightened child…or perhaps a warm place in the parents’ bed was the goal all along.

Before you read this week’s humble offering, please know – this is not a statement on anything as controversial as political ideology, critical race theory or even your picks for this year’s Oscars. Conversations regarding what has become “The Slap” have gone on, ad nauseam…and perhaps these conversations were needed and necessary. But this column is written for all of us to think about “the human condition.” No hidden agendas. No political or racist undertones.

Today, which as I write is April 3rd, and the day the Ruby-throated hummingbirds returned to my house. Oddly it was a feast of the Superbells calibrachoas. This story, however, starts the first week of October which is when I planted them.

Diamond Snow has dramatically changed how we look at euphorbias or that not so glamorous common name of spurge. We all fell madly in love with its sibling Diamond Frost and subsequently gave it hundreds of awards in university trials. Diamond Snow however is a game changer.

Helen Churchill Candee (October 5, 1858 – August 23, 1949) was an American author, journalist, interior decorator, feminist, and geographer. Today, she is best known as a passenger on the first and only voyage of the RMS Titanic in 1912 -- and lived to write “Sealed Orders” about her experience in rowing Life Boat 6 with a woman who became known as “The Unsinkable Molly Brown. Candee also is known for her later work as a travel writer and explorer of southeast Asia. Helen was born Helen

Ask any UT freshman. Those first few weeks on the Forty Acres are eye openers, to say the least. There’s also much to be learned, which isn’t listed in any class syllabus and isn’t charged for in the tuition.

The past couple of years there has been a lot of love in the world of petunias, thanks to one very unique variety by the name of Supertunia Lovie Dovie. We have all seen petunias, with stripes, some stars, others halos and blushes, but there is a special one with hearts.