We explored another nursery in town today: The Natural Gardener<\/a>. It blew me away, I think it is an attraction on many levels. The prices are fair, they have a tremendous variety, endorse organic gardening, have an abundant and helpful staff, numerous display gardens and a few barn animals. I could and will take the kids there on a weekday and kill an hour easily. And maybe a coupla twenties. Easily.<\/em><\/p>\n For the kids garden I selected: We had terrible cupcake cravings today and I didn’t fight the urge to bake two dozen vanilla cupcakes with vanilla buttercream frosting. Magnolia Bakery recipe<\/a>. The frosting became a pale pink and Damon insisted I forego the sprinkles (which I will never forgive him for; he believes that sprinkles ruin cupcakes but I will fight this argument to the grave–who WOULDN’T?!<\/em>). The icing called for one entire bag of confectioner’s sugar. That’s right. Ultimately, they tasted like Krispy Kreme donuts with the same pleasurable guilt. One can only eat perhaps, well, one. So I boxed them up immediately and marked them “BARBEQUE” for tomorrow’s potluck at Damon’s colleague’s home. Why bother taking a photograph when you can imagine what they look like<\/a>, without the sprinkles<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We have a wonderful wool rug in our living room. We bought it in May about three hours before our renters signed a year contract on our home in McKinney, and I somehow believe that it was because of the rug. Being inviting and cozy, it softened our concrete floors and probably made an otherwise […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,11,12,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-85","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-austin","category-exploring","category-making","category-seeing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=85"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=85"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=85"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.stephs.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=85"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Luetkeana\"](\"http:\/\/steph.sicore.org\/luetkeana-tm.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n
\nLamb’s Ear
\nTexas Rock Rose
\nPineapple Sage
\nTexas Fall Aster
\nPurple Oxalis
\nsome feathery-purple-flowered perennial that attracts throngs of Viceroy butterflies that I can’t remember the name of and I’m too tired to go outside and look on the plant tag to find out what it’s called
\nRound-leaf eucalyptus
\n<\/em>and Damon’s pick:
\nSquid Agave.<\/em>
\n(They were out of Pony Foot and I dutifully denied myself the Smoke Plant, but I’ll be back for both soon enough)<\/p>\n![\"Img](\"http:\/\/steph.sicore.org\/IMG_2955-tm.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n