Wildflowers in South Texas, or Be Careful Where You Sit, Pardner!

Howdy folks, and welcome! Today we're going to talk about Spring and flowers, so pull up a chair for a minute and let's get started.

Spring has sprung down in these parts, although it's a strange sort of Spring by any standards. It isn't hot yet, and really hasn't been all year. Evenings of late have been in the high 30s and low 40s, highly atypical for Texas weather during this time of year. It hasn't rained all that much either, although that just might be a way of evening things out after last year's non-stop (and I mean non-stop) rain event, a weather extravaganza that lasted as long as the one experienced by that Noah fellow, albeit without all the animals. So there we go, goofy weather in springtime, a condition guaranteed to send the national media into paroxysms of "the sky is falling the sky is falling" as they are so wont to do at the least provocation these days. At the end of the day it's a simple concept though; this is Texas. We have goofy weather, and lots of it. It's normal. Ordinary. Everyday. The sky ain't fallin', it just ain't hot yet, a blessing of sorts.

We didn't convene to discuss climate, though, nor doomsayers, nor the national media, nor even the potential effect of the Wooly Bear Caterpillar on whatever a Wooly Bear Caterpillar could have possibly have any kind of an effect on. That's poor grammar, or syntax, or something equally erudite, but it's also true. We are here today to discuss Texas wildflowers.

Anybody who's been to Texas in the springtime has seen bluebonnets, one of the prettier flowers around in my never-humble opinion. Indian blanket is coming in, as is its cousin Indian paintbrush. The few sunflowers that visit this far south are beginning to show themselves, and a myriad of other flowers are in full bloom as well. I think the lavender might be out too, although I'm pretty sure I wouldn't know what a lavender looked like if it came up and bit me. That's sad in a way, since our community recently declared itself to be the lavender capitol of the known universe (on what grounds I don't know, but we did it), thus presuming that we all know what a lavender is. (I did once have a lavender shirt back in the 60s, an event that went totally un-noticed in my community at the time, but I digress...)

Getting back to wildflowers; my personal favorites, but don't tell anybody because I'm a guy and I don't think we're supposed to like flowers since we're rough and tough and all that stuff, are the little bitty ones. I mean really itsy-bitsy, teensie-tiny little flowers, none bigger than 3/16 of an inch in diameter at best. The little guys come in all manner of colors and patterns, generally grow in little clusters and are really pretty, much more so than their more extravagant cousins, at least in my mind. It's worth getting down on hand and knee to look at them. They're weeds, of course, as are all wildflowers when all's said and done, so they end up getting whacked by the lawnmower at one point or another, but then flowers are a passing thing anyway. There's a certain irony there, I think. I have these beautiful flowers in the yard that I truly love, and at some point in the equation I mow 'em down with the dubious fruits of Technology! It's a plot worthy of Poe! Beauty. Tragedy. Irony. The plot could be made into a major Hollywood production!

Or not.

Sometimes, depending on the flower and how wet the Spring has been, it's possible to have acres and acres of countryside covered in wildflowers. Once, many years ago, I had entered a motorcycle enduro being held about seventy miles east of where I now live. I'd decided that active participation in motocross, my former motorsport of choice, was probably a bad idea since I was getting older (in my late twenties!) and had responsibilities that would soon include a child so, without further ado, it was off to the "safer" world of enduros. The event under discussion was a 100-miler across country far rougher than any motocross track I'd ever ridden, and with a time requirement to be observed. I pooped out after about fifty miles (this was my first event---that's my story and I'm sticking with it) and took a short-cut to get back to the start/finish line and my truck before death, or at least a heat stroke, overtook me. Somewhere in there I crossed a pasture, several acres worth, covered with Indian blanket as far as the eye could see. I rode through them slowly, marveling at the wonderland passing beneath me. They really smelled bad, but I think that's because there were millions of them there---too much of anything is bad, you know---but the memory of their colors is vivid to this day. That's the Beauty part.

There's a down side to everything, though---balance in the universe is one excuse that's frequently offered for the phenomenon. During the same time period a friend of a friend, a young lady in her mid-twenties, decided that the flowers were so beautiful that year that she had to take her infant daughter and photograph her in the midst of nature's abundance, which she proceeded to do forthwith. I'm told the pictures were great, and her daughter was just fine with the experience (something that isn't necessarily a given with small children, who can become absolutely terrified by the most innocuous of events), but our intrepid photographer was bitten in her sit-down place by a Brown Recluse, a spider who's venom inflicts severe discomfort, misery, and scarring upon those it visits. I suspect the scar is still there. That, my friends, is the Beast part, but it's pretty unusual that that sort of thing occurs. I mention it only because I remembered it and was running out of things to write about. The bottom line is that Texas is awash with color these days and it's wonderful. I think I'm going to collect Jenny, put the top down on the roadster, and go explore some back roads. We'll be thinking about you!

hasta bye-bye, phil