I always hate to coin phrases like "they always say ______" because, really, how annoying is that? Who are "they" and why are "they" always right???? However, I need to make an exception. THEY always say if you don't like the weather in Texas, wait five minutes and it will change. Some of you who don't live here might think that's an exaggeration. It's not really. My cousin once commented on a photo of mine on Facebook. He wrote, "I'm pretty convinced you have the craziest weather on earth in Abilene." Yeah, that about sums it up. The picture he was commenting on was a piece of hail the size of a ping pong ball that fell one morning. We left the house and it was sunny. By the time we got to school two miles away, the sky was lit up with lightning and it was POURING hail. I'm not kidding - the school yard looked like it was covered in snow. The temperature that morning was a chilly 45. And just two days before that we were having summer weather - sunny and 90+ degrees!
Anyway, this blog post today is not going to be about the weather. Well, it's not supposed to be. I kind of went off on a tangent. I wanted to start off saying that I'm not a big fan of spring. I know it's a favorite season for a lot of people (my mother). Everything is new and green and blooming and getting warm. Here in Texas it is still dry and windy, mostly hot with an occasional cold day thrown in. Give me fall and winter with football, Christmas music, turtlenecks and fuzzy socks please. We don't have grass, we have weeds, so even in the springtime our yard doesn't look very pretty. The only trees we have are mesquite trees, so big deal. Where are the magnolia or dogwood or any other pretty flowering trees? Certainly not here. However, there is one thing I have come to love about springtime in Texas. Bluebonnets. They are the state flower and are so, so pretty, but you have to be careful because if you blink, you might miss them. When the time is right, they pop up out of nowhere and, seemingly overnight, you have fields upon fields of blue. Then, about a week later, they are wilted and fading and then just gone!
Ever since J was a baby, I have made it a tradition to venture out into the field of bluebonnets and take pictures. Everyone always loves these photos, and in ten years, we've only had two springs when I didn't get any. One year was unusually warm or wet or something, and the few bluebonnets that did pop out weren't very picture-worthy. Last year was such a crazy winter that we had NONE. Zip, zero, nada.
Apparently this year Mother Nature decided to flaunt her awesomeness, because they were EVERYWHERE! Bluebonnets had been out for over a week, so most of them were already past their prime when I went to take pictures. The big field near my house that we usually go to, though, was still overrun with them, and an occasional pretty yellow flower thrown in. Surprisingly my kids were even cooperative about the photo op.
No comments:
Post a Comment