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What di I have to say about Texas..... Wildflowers?
Today I was Taxed with Talking about Texas, by ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sorceror.
Well, there are a lot of things I could talk about. There are a lot of things I won't really want to engage with....and I'm lucky that I don't have to! So I won't!
Instead I am going to talk a little bit about flowers.
The flowers were definitely one of my favourite things about Texas, outside of the friends I made there. The spring is famous for the fields of Bluebonnets, and people take their kids and pets and go out on the Easter weekend and take posed shots. (Oftentimes they squat, with hilarious effect).
They would usually be starting to bloom around mid-March, which was right around spring break, and coincidentally right around the time that a bunch of my Texas friends were having our mini gaming con. It was hosted onkennesaw's parents ranch, out in tinytown Texas, a fair drive away, and the drive back was often very beautiful. When I was working at the conservation lab, the drive was just far enough out of town that we would drive past some flower-filled fields for a few weeks, too.
In addition to the bluebonnets, there was a lot of Indian Paintbrush, which is orange and therefore I love it, and often they were mixed together. Plus a lot of other flowers - the ones that I can remember the names of are pink and white primroses, winecups, black eyed susans, and purple vetch. Ones I saw a lot of once I looked them up were firewheel and Mexican hat. But there were a lot I never learned the names of either. Even just around the parks where I would walk Jola, there would be flowers all over the place - lots of teensy tiny ones for various grasses, and weeds, and such. They were all very pretty. I love wildflowers, what can I say? They remind me of my mother - we used to take family walks out on the university owned woodlot when we were kids and look at them.
The Texas wildflowers, though, are kind of a lie. I mean, they are wild, and afaik at least some of them are native plants, but there was a big project in the 70's, orchestrated by ladybird Johnson (she was from Austin, I think?), to replant them along the highways as a beautification project. But they're there now, doing their own thing without need for further intervention - an example of the relationship between humans and their environment. And a very pretty one at that.
Index of Texas Wildflowers if you want to see pictures of the flowers I mentioned.
sorceror.Well, there are a lot of things I could talk about. There are a lot of things I won't really want to engage with....and I'm lucky that I don't have to! So I won't!
Instead I am going to talk a little bit about flowers.
The flowers were definitely one of my favourite things about Texas, outside of the friends I made there. The spring is famous for the fields of Bluebonnets, and people take their kids and pets and go out on the Easter weekend and take posed shots. (Oftentimes they squat, with hilarious effect).
They would usually be starting to bloom around mid-March, which was right around spring break, and coincidentally right around the time that a bunch of my Texas friends were having our mini gaming con. It was hosted on
kennesaw's parents ranch, out in tinytown Texas, a fair drive away, and the drive back was often very beautiful. When I was working at the conservation lab, the drive was just far enough out of town that we would drive past some flower-filled fields for a few weeks, too.In addition to the bluebonnets, there was a lot of Indian Paintbrush, which is orange and therefore I love it, and often they were mixed together. Plus a lot of other flowers - the ones that I can remember the names of are pink and white primroses, winecups, black eyed susans, and purple vetch. Ones I saw a lot of once I looked them up were firewheel and Mexican hat. But there were a lot I never learned the names of either. Even just around the parks where I would walk Jola, there would be flowers all over the place - lots of teensy tiny ones for various grasses, and weeds, and such. They were all very pretty. I love wildflowers, what can I say? They remind me of my mother - we used to take family walks out on the university owned woodlot when we were kids and look at them.
The Texas wildflowers, though, are kind of a lie. I mean, they are wild, and afaik at least some of them are native plants, but there was a big project in the 70's, orchestrated by ladybird Johnson (she was from Austin, I think?), to replant them along the highways as a beautification project. But they're there now, doing their own thing without need for further intervention - an example of the relationship between humans and their environment. And a very pretty one at that.
Index of Texas Wildflowers if you want to see pictures of the flowers I mentioned.