Babette & Miladus

A few picture of the Texas wildlife, both animal and vegetal, from my trip last week. Texas is so different from the East Coast that I delight in recording it.

Two Trees at dawn.
I was happy to be back visiting my parents on the Texas prairie.
This is one of the most peaceful places I've ever known, and the house that Dad designed and built fits perfectly into the landscape.

Dad's study, with the dawn sun reflected in his window.

Later in the day, looking out one of the living room windows to the sunflowers and prairie beyond (and one of the two live oaks to the right).

In spite of my fears of Texas fauna decimating the plants or the desert sun baking them, Mom's herb garden, my Mother's Day present to her in April, was flourishing in August. Legs: Mom and her twin sister, for whom I am named.

The Mint that Ate Cleveland (allusion to one of Steve McQueen's first B-movies): I also put in a "wet" garden (chives, basil, parsley and mint) in April, on the other side of the garage. In August, the mint had devoured the basil and was invading the driveway! Mom and Auntie were very pleased. Dad was less so when he kept having to drive over it.

Here, after I removed fully 3/4 of the mint, the stepping stone was uncovered and a tiny basil restored. Notice also Mother's much replanted (to find a less windy site) new rosebush, which is also flourishing.

Closeup of one of the "Arizona" rose rosebuds.

The Texas fauna is numerous and interesting. In April I saw a turtle, road runners and armadillos. One night in August, this tiny frog decided to visit the herb garden.

Some of the fauna, however, is less than friendly. Dad ran over this copperhead on his way out that night (I wasn't too eager to get close, whence the fuzzy photograph).

The next morning, it had been picked clean by the vultures…

…and later the same day, the ants took care of the rest.

That night, an enormous black widow spider (a good inch across the body at least) succumbed to Dad's Deet.

Friday morning we went to Mineral Wells, about a half hour from the parents' house, where one of the best herb merchants I've encountered, Ms. Boudreau of Boudreau Herbs, has this Texas birdhouse hanging in her garden.

Ms. Boudreau herself, ready to show us her many and often rare herbs (I got a Salvia apiana, which I had been trying to find for a couple of summers; she just had them sitting out with the more common herbs). I bought Mom and Auntie a few additions for their herb gardens and commissioned a few things for December. A major resource!

Some of Ms. Boudreau's herbs are in a greenhouse, others are out in the open under shade awnings, as here.

Then we went to the Clark Botanical Gardens, a remarkable garden in Mineral Wells (worth the trip, by the way), whose herb garden Ms. Boudreau designed and maintains. My cousin Jeanne's extensive garden at Two Lakes was designed by the original designer of Clark Gardens.

The Clark Gardens are enormous, and especially in the August Texas heat, a cart is a much better idea for exploring than walking. A charming young lady drove us around for about an hour, showing us the many different specialty gardens. Here, Dad in the front, with Mom and Auntie in the back.

At one hilly overlook, with a fountain aerating the goldfish pond, Auntie and Mom took a break.

Clark Gardens has almost as much wildlife as it has vegetation. Here, a butterfly at the Chapel…

…an 8-inch lizard on a tree trunk…

…guinea hens (omnipresent in Texas, but when roasted in France as pintade, Milad's favorite poultry)…

…and a crane flapping across the Japanese water garden.

The herb garden is spectacular: dry-stone walled and divided by crushed brick pathways. I expecially admired the old, weathered Arp rosemary tree.

Clark Gardens is also famous for its roses; it has one of the US's experimental rose gardens. Here, a view of a corner of the carefully laid out rose garden pathways, whose pedagogical order and arrangement reminded me of the principles of the Ancien Régime's Jardin du roi in Paris.

The waterlilies, and…

The beautiful Japanese bridge that leads across the water garden to the Chapel garden.

My father and brother (who came to join us the next Tuesday), taking a walk down the road from Two Trees in the hot afternoon sun.