Last Saturday I traveled out to the countryside with some friends for the Annual Viewing of the Bluebonnets, and a good time was had by all. This is a Texas ritual to celebrate our all-too-brief spring season. Families pile into their minivans and SUVs and drive toward Austin or San Antonio to view the marvel of the wild flowers. On every country lane, cars line the roadside as families and young lovers pose in the fields of blue for the obligatory photos. It’s a fine time of the year, celebrated by poets and writers like J. Frank Dobie, who said that “no other flower—for me at least—brings such upsurging of the spirit and at the same time such restfulness.”
I, too, have stacks of photos of frolic among the bluebonnets — with my first love, in my college days, with my new husband, later with our sons as they grew from babies to young men with loves of their own, and later still with tiny baby girls in bright sundresses …
Here’s me in the bluebonnets
Somewhere near Brenham
And here’s another photo:
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- Somewhere near Brenham
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- Shirley in the bluebonnets
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- Shirley in the bluebonnets 2009
and there are some nice pix on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluebonnet#Gallery
and you can find plenty of bluebonnet photos on Google
Here’s the second chapter of my Eternal Work in Progress, A Death in Comanche, which expresses my own feelings about this time of year. Enjoy.
I ambled north on State Highway 36, breathing in the beauty of the late spring day. The fields were covered in bluebonnets, interspersed with bright patches of scarlet, pink and yellow, Indian Paintbrush, buttercups, Texas primrose. The soft breeze sent ripples through the flowers like waves on a vast inland sea. It is the time, as A.L. Morgan put it, “when the sky falls on Texas.”
It’s a common misconception that Texas, at least the southern half, doesn’t have four seasons. That’s wrong. Our Fall Leaf changes every year around Thanksgiving, and winter usually shows up for a day or two in late January. Sometimes the temperature plummets to below 32 degrees. The rest of the time it’s summer, except for a few weeks in March and April when the temperature is perfect, the humidity is low, and every roadside, yard and vacant lot is covered in a riot of flowers both wild and tame. For that brief time, Texas is Heaven.
General Phil Sheridan, Military Governor of Texas after the Late Unpleasantness, is reported to have said, “If I owned both Hell and Texas, I’d live in Hell and rent out Texas.” A good many Texans wished he’d done so, but that’s another story. Even General Phil might’ve liked Texas if he’d gone there when the bluebonnets were in bloom.
Me, I love it. It’s my favorite time of the year, when the world renews itself and Mother Nature puts on a fine show. I felt that I, too, was beginning again. Highway 36 was my yellow brick road from an unhappy, turbulent past to a tranquil, worry-free future in the town where I was born. The best-laid plans …
I have plenty of bluebonnet photos, too. My favorite hangs on the bedroom wall, my mother and father, smiling, happy, and healthy, surrounded by bluebonnets.
I wish I had a photo like that. By the time we had color film, Mother wasn’t healthy enough to pose in the flowers. I talked to my granddaughters last week and told them about the perfect weather and fields of flowers. They’re in cold, damp Minnesota now, and can’t remember when they were babies rolling around in the bluebonnets. I hope they’ll get to come back one of these days and do it again.
Oh, Shirley.
dang if you didn’t make me cry.
AGAIN!!!!!!
this is beautiful.
I have never seen real bluebonnets in all their glory. I have never been to Texas. ONE of these days I’m coming to Texas. You can show me bluebonnets and we can eat Bluebonnet Ice Cream. Straight from the carton; while we sit up all night talking, laughing and crying. Now, doesn’t that sound fun?!!! I can’t wait.
Hugs, my friend!!
Kaye
Silly Kaye, it’s Blue Bell ice cream – although, come to think of it, Bluebonnet might have been a more fitting name. The company is in Brenham, which is right in the middle of the best bluebonnet fields in Texas.
Come on out, when the bluebonnet bloom again next year, we’ll eat Bluebonnet ice cream and talk & laugh & cry & then mosey on out to the Hill Country and visit with Cousin Nancy at the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, and if we’re in luck, Kinky might be there.
Pfft!!!! Blue BELL ice cream! Anyway – it IS the best; you were right about that. I never ever thought anyone could beat my favorite grocery store brand, but Blue Bell does. but I think we should rename it Bluebonnet. just ’cause. If I don’t get to Texas next year, maybe the next? I gotta meet your friends Kinky and Cousin Nancy. You know – I need to retire . . .