Yellow.

No, I do not feel tired of taking pictures of the flowers. I cherish seeing them. North Texas may not look this way again any time soon. And I delight in discovering the arrival of the Yellow-headed Blackbirds.

   

Upland Sandpiper in a Wheat Field

      My bird list today: Black-necked Stilts, Great White Egret, Upland Sandpiper, Horned Lark, Eastern Meadowlark, Burrowing Owls (six or seven, my record in one sitting), Blue-winged Teal, Mockingbirds, Red-winged Blackbirds, Bullock's Oriole, Great-tailed Grackles, Scissortail Flycatchers, White-crowned Sparrow, Lark Sparrow, Roadrunner, Bobwhite . . . no hawks. No hawks? Probably napping after their breakfast.

Upland Sandpiper.

Scissortail Flycatcher regurgitating a large bug. Ack. 

Jackrabbit in the abundant grass fields. 

Prairie dogs.

Carpets, Carpets of Flowers

     I may easily agree with most folks around these parts of North Texas that we may not see these luxurious carpets of flowers again any time soon. But then, I said the same thing a couple of years ago. Earth heals itself.

     Clockwise, left to right: Fields of Coreopsis basalis; in the foreground, Gaillardia pulchella, a red flower known as the Indian blanket; a small hill covered in coreopsis and Indian blanket; surrounded by coreopsis stand the Argemone albiflora, subsp. texana; stones and a gnarly oak, one of the parts I like to reach when I visit the ranch; tire tracks lead through more flowers, including soon to bloom agave plants; and finally, around a stone covered with lichen grow the coreopsis and Tradescantia occidentalis, a delicate blue flower known the prairie spiderwort.

      To add to the beauty of my experience I used a Nikon F6, a 70-200mm lens, and Portra 400 film.

Aerobat Mac

       Mac M. and David Martin flew around this afternoon. They flew around parachutists and then around themselves. They flew around to benefit the Museum of North Texas History and to the delight their audience. They left fleeting art in the sky over Kickapoo Airport.

Walk on Flowers

      Flowery views, my two doggies, and an F6 make a nice jaunt in the countryside.

Mowing around the "Texas Bluebonnets.

Texas Stork's-bill.

Dogs standing on flowering Texas Stork's-bill. 

White Bluebonnet

Or, whitebonnet?  Interesting essay at the Zanthan Gardens Web site.

Nikon F6

Timeless Moment

      My mother suffers with dementia. She remembered me, though, through that fogginess, and phoned me three times last week. We spoke sweetly to one another, tenderly, about her painting, about the flowers that cover Texas every spring. We had beautiful conversations, a mother and a daughter. We were blessed.

Open the Hangar Door!

      Stormy weather comes our way, and after it leaves, the hangar door will open, and the plane will fly!

Cherished Volunteers: In Fort Worth

        At the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens, volunteers sit to rest in between pulling weeds and raking at the "sanctuary for the senses."

Article: Radar's Eye on Wildlife

http://www.tpwmagazine.com/archive/2012/apr/ed_2_radarwildlife/

Strawberries, Cherished Volunteers in the Garden.

A fly on a strawberry leaf. Nikon D3, 105mm, f/3.3, 1/250, tethered flash unit SB 900.

Bluebonnets

      I could not stand to *not* take a picture or two (or dozens) of the bluebonnets. Feeling awed by the Lupinus texensis makes them grow more lush, more colorful, and more expansive. It tires them out and it tires us out, and it is a part of life in Texas.

Nikon D700.

Nikon F6.

Nikon F6.

      The magazine Texas Monthly published a hilarious commentary, copy/pasted below, on the effect of the bluebonnets on people.  See more about the article on their Website here.

Dan Winters.

Sarah Wilson.

Randal Ford

Kind of Blue, by Jake Silverstein

       Two framed letters hang side by side in the main conference room at the offices of TEXAS MONTHLY, both of them written and signed by the magazine’s founder and former publisher, Mike Levy. The first is a note that prefaced the inaugural issue, in February 1973. The second is a follow-up published in the next issue. Aside from the obvious foundational importance of these documents, they were chosen to hang in the magazine’s inner sanctum because they illustrate well one of the most serious challenges faced by its staff over the past four decades: how to write about bluebonnets.

       “Texas Monthly is a major effort in magazine journalism,” Mike’s initial note read. “We’re not competing with the vapid Sunday supplements with bluebonnets on their covers.” In case this message was unclear to anyone, the first issue was buttressed with a marketing campaign that posed a bold and impudent question: “Sick of Bluebonnets and Bum Steers? . . . Send us ten dollars and we’ll send you a damned good magazine about Texas. Monthly.”

       The following month, the handful of readers who picked up the March issue ofTEXAS MONTHLY found the second note, which addressed the reader response provoked by the magazine’s apparent hostility to the state flower. “We were getting what can charitably be termed ‘critical commentary’ even before our first issue was off the press,” Mike reported. “One gentleman from Dallas wrote to say that ‘we are not sick of bluebonnets, a roadside or field of which is just about the most beautiful sight in the world. Why would you think we are sick of them?’ Somebody (unidentified) from Fort Worth wrote, ‘As a native Texan, I would like to know what cave you people crawled out of. No, I for one am certainly not sick of bluebonnets.’ ” Exhibiting the moral flexibility required of any great publisher, Mike explained that the angry letters “led me to call a staff meeting where, by an eight-to-two vote (one abstention), the magazine adopted as official policy the statement that ‘We, too, love our bluebonnets, a roadside or field of which is just about the most beautiful sight in the world.’ ”

      As far as I know, that policy has never been overturned. And yet we have reckoned with the bluebonnet for decades. The problem is not Lupinus texensisitself, which is as beautiful a flower as has ever bloomed, across this or any other state. The problem is the overabundance of saccharine art and literature that exists to praise the humble blossom, the accretion of which has made it a symbol of, in Mike’s words, “nice, bland pap.” As Suzanne Winckler put it in a 1985 column, “An expanse of those blue and stalwart flowers strewn across a pasture or along a highway prompts such a welling-up of joy . . . that the bluebonnet has become the victim of profuse attempts to describe its perfection.”

    We have contributed a few attempts at such description ourselves, my favorite being Jan Reid’s 1991 analysis, which, in getting it so exactly right, proves that it’s possible to write intelligently about bluebonnets: “Their sudden abundance each spring nurtures our fascination with magnitude and reach—whole damn canvases of color, not the fine brushstroke.”

     Of course, it’s not really about the bluebonnets. It’s about the complex tension that runs through every issue of TEXAS MONTHLY—the tension between doing serious journalism about Texas that ignores mindless boosterism and finding sincere and original ways to celebrate a place we love unconditionally. In attempting to strike that balance each month, we have nobody else in mind but you, reader, who deserves a magazine that respects your capacity for both pride and stern judgment.

    As for the bluebonnets, they’re blooming again. After a droughty year in which they made a fairly poor showing, their luxurious azure curtain has been once more unfurled over our drear winter pastures (sorry, I couldn’t resist some bad bluebonnet writing myself). And we couldn’t be happier. To mark the occasion, we commissioned a photo essay (“Exercise of Flower,” page 128). Though it does contain one picture sure to enrage some readers (which we debated censoring), it is, on the whole, a clear reflection of official company policy. We, too, love our bluebonnets.

Post Rain Beauty and Growth

Rain droplets on the bird bath. Nikon V 1.

        Clusters of Nothoscordum bivalve, known as false garlic, a member of the lilly family, grew in many places of my yard, the grass providing a deep, lush, green background. Nikon F6.

After the rain. Nikon D700.

F6: Botanic Gardens in Fort Worth

       Enjoyed using my trusty Nikon F6, Provia 100, and tethered flash unit at the Fort Worth Botanic Gardens.

Cowboys Branding

      On a foggy day, cowboys rode into the pasture, found the cows, herded them into the pens, and branded them. They also inoculated them and sprayed bug repellent on the cattle's fur before releasing them back into the pasture.