Spring in Texas

I’ve been gone from Texas for almost eleven years now, and I haven’t really missed it much. Family and friends, of course, but little else. I hated the heat; and I hated the conservative mindset so common there. In almost all ways I’m glad I left Texas for Chicago.

But there is one thing I miss about Texas: the bluebonnets. Other spring flowers are, of course, beautiful, but it’s the bluebonnets that I remember most vividly. There would be whole fields of them, sometimes mixed up, as in the photo, with Indian paintbrush. Sometimes there are patches of what I call LYFs--little yellow flowers--intermingled. LYF? Hey, I was an English teacher, not a botanist.

Go to Google images and you can see many photos of the bluebonnets. Around the area where I lived there would often be large fields of flowers sometimes with deer. As I remember, the bluebonnets only grew in Central Texas, about from Waco to Austin; I lived 20 miles east of the midpoint between the two, more or less, and there were always fields of bluebonnets. It made the upcoming high heat of summer almost bearable.

There is a common misconception about picking bluebonnets: it’s against the law. That’s not true, at least not entirely true: From 1933 to 1973, it really was illegal in Texas to pick bluebonnets. Until 1973, a law originally nicknamed The Wild Flower Protection Act, levied a fine of $1 to $10 against anyone who set out to “pick, pull, pull up, tear up, dig up, cut, break, injure, burn or destroy” bluebonnets or any plants in public parks or on private property. State Rep. Ben Vaughan (D-Greenville) complained the bill made it illegal for a child to pick a flower for a teacher: “The bees are liable to be arrested for sucking the honey out of the wildflowers.” Cooler heads eventually won out and it is now okay to pick bluebonnets—although it’s still illegal in state parks and on private property. (This information thanks to the Ft. Worth Star Telegram).

The state government has seeded many of the rights-of-way alongside the highway; just driving around Central Texas in April is a treat; see the image below.

I miss spring in Texas, but I have many grand memories and there are always places to find images. Not that an image of a field of bluebonnets is anywhere near the real thing.