Highway Heaven (Texas Wildflowers)

If you're planning a road trip in Texas, spring is the time to do it, 

when wildflowers parade up and down the roadside.

Even without the rains that really make them pop, 

 a few hardy show-stoppers strutted their stuff for me on my return trip from Houston 

along Highway 71 a week ago.

There were the usual bluebonnets,
spilling across an open field...

The pink primroses (aka buttercups) filling the highway median...

(notice the one lone Indian Paintbrush?)

And then there was this field fronting an old farmhouse outside of LaGrange, 

that caused me to gasp, 

brake 

and steer off the road so I could capture the beauty in my camera. 

Bluebonnets alone are pretty,

 but sprinkle some red drummond phlox in there, 

and, well, you'll gasp 

and pull off the road for photo after photo after photo, 

several almost exactly alike, 

because you just can't stop snapping away...

until you're worried the people in the farmhouse are going to come out and speak to you - 

or maybe just call the police...

So you hop in your car and go - 

after taking one last photo of the awesome oak tree guarding the old farmhouse, of course...

What a wonderful surprise! 

Hilary at the Smitten Image presented me with a Post of the Week award for this one. Yay! 

Thanks, Hilary! 

Click on the image below to check out the other POTW winners.

Deepwater in Color

I spent a weekend back in my childhood neighborhood

where shaded streets meander ever outward from a garden of schools planted in an open field,

like petals on a flower expand outward from the pistil.

On Sunday I laced up my running shoes and hit a path that circles through the field, connecting the campuses.

All around me color popped from the green grass, 

flowers I once took for granted because I saw them spring after spring after spring. 

Except primroses - they inspired my wedding colors.

I never took them for granted.

 Still so lovely...

My parents' backyard also exploded with color

from wisteria 

from a yesterday, today and tomorrow bush

and from tiny pink blossoms, nestled in the grass.

This fig tree has guarded the back fence for as long as I can remember, 

an offspring of one in my great- grandmother's garden.

I found tons to capture in my camera, just by stepping out into the yard. 

Not all of the color was from nature, but it was interesting, nonetheless, like this laundry tree in an adjoining yard...