Texas spring

Bluebonnets mean spring in Texas. Along with mountain laurel. But usually the bluebonnets follow the mountain laurel. It's as if we're tempted with smells and then with visions. I had always heard about bluebonnets from my camp friends, years before I moved to Texas. And it is, after all, the state flower. But the first year that I lived here and saw fields of bluebonnets rising from highway medians, scattered throughout the Hill Country, and randomly emerging from the gravel and nothingness of people's lawns in town, I was truly taken aback. They are a sight to behold. I found a remarkable patch yesterday in a neighborhood not far from one of the many places I've lived in Austin. There were so many ways to photograph these beauties. But this photo seemed to capture their tenacity as they stand their ground among the cacti...and I even found a few sprouting from a crack in the sidewalk.