POTR #30 Bluebonnets And Buttrflies

PEACE ON THE ROAD
Bluebonnets And Butterflies
May 13, 2007

It is necessary for a certain amount of time in a person’s life to pass before he can see and appreciate the things that are around him every day? For myself I would have to say that many times that has been the case. My parents moved to a farm in Princeton, Kansas in 1943. I was one year old. With the exception of short vacations, college time, and a few months in another state I was on the farm until 1962. In 1962 I moved to Colorado and only went to Kansas to visit the family. So I spent nineteen springs in Princeton and should have known how spring progressed. The first week of May 1969 I took a new daughter on her first visit to the homes of her grandparents and other relatives. I was amazed at what I saw. While I had been away the countryside had been planted with many Red Bud trees that were in glorious bloom. These trees were in yards, along the roadsides, out in the brush and even in pastures. Of course the trees had been there for hundreds of years and I just had not ever paid attention to them in the time that I was growing up. I have often wondered what other wonders that I missed. When I was in college Appreciation Of Architecture was a required class. I did not appreciate the class. I was planning to be a farmer like my Father before me. I could not see the value of knowing about flying buttresses, tall spires and vaulted ceilings in the cathedrals of Europe. Maybe a farmer truly does not need to know about those things but now I regret that I did not learn more when I could. In our travels we have seen many very impressive buildings. While the homes of people are often very beautiful I think that the buildings that are the most impressive are usually found in the downtown areas. There is so much stonework that is put into town buildings that were built in the early 1900’s. My personal opinion is that there has been a loss of esthetic quality. Though somewhat small the most impressive building that I believe we have come across is the Wise County courthouse in Decatur, Texas. To be sure by the standard of today it would be inefficient and grossly expensive. Still it makes me wish I had appreciated architecture more in college.

THE WISE COUNTY COURTHOUSE IN DECATUR, TEXAS

Every spring we always look forward to the blooming of the flowers that push up through the snow and say that the winter is over. While I have not seen snow except on TV for a lot of months, I have been very glad to see the spring flowers grace the landscape. Lady Bird Johnson pushed to get the highway departments of the nation to plant flowers to beautify the roadsides of America. In Texas she was an effective influence. The roadsides are a blaze of color for miles and miles. Just across the fences from the highway right-of-way the number of flowers taper off dramatically. There are still a lot of flowers, just not as thick and not as varied. One flower that grows not only along the highway but also may well cover huge fields is the Texas State Flower, the blue bonnet. There have been individual plants, patches of a few hundred square feet, the greater part of an acre, and in one place a field that must have been forty acres of solid blue bonnets. It is always to a bonus to see in real life a field where a picture for the state tourist promotion brochure might have been taken. Some times a field has other flowers in among the blue bonnets and they add an element of beauty. The picture below reminded me of the USA flag with its red, white and blue. We have seen other fields of yellow and fields of red, but none have challenged the blue bonnets for size of an individual field.

A RED, WHITE AND BLUE FIELD OF FLOWERS IN TEXAS

Of course when you have a lot of flowers, what else is there apt to be also? Bees are a logical answer but the one that I am looking for is butterflies. When we were in Rockport there were so many caterpillars that the news reporters were devoting some of their news time to reporting on them. One evening they showed a building in Corpus Christi that was probably fifty percent covered with the caterpillar of a tufted variety. I don’t know how long the average caterpillar normally lives but I know of some that are really just leaf eating machines for several weeks. Then of course they spin a cocoon or develop a chrysalis and then metamorphes into a moth or butterfly in a short length of time. In the few weeks between our time in Rockport and arriving here in Bridgeport the butterflies came out in full force. In this campground here there are thousands of butterflies. There are so many that at times we have had trouble keeping them out of the Vectra. In fact once after we had been in the Vectra for several hours we had one come flying across the room. It allowed me to catch it and put it outside without hurting it. Of course I have no idea how long it was out before one of the mocking birds might have caught it. Mocking birds are the most prevalent of the birds here. We have had cardinals that sit on our Jeep and even had one hen turkey cross the road right in front of the Vectra. We have a tree very close to the Vectra in which we have placed a grapefruit half. It has taken the butterflies a few days to find it but now that they know where it is there are times that they totally cover the fruit. Of course the mocking birds then come to the fruit to get the butterflies.

ONE OF THOUSANDS OF BUTTERFLIES BY OUR HOME

If you have been seeing the weather in Texas you will have seen that some places have had very high winds and torrential rainfall. Some of it has been not too far from us but we have been fortunate to miss the really bad conditions. I am not sure why we are staying in areas known for bad weather this time of year when we can go wherever we desire. I hope that going to a school reunion for the first time since I graduated in 1960 makes this route worthwhile. But also I was talking to a trucker that was in bad snowstorms in Denver just a week ago. We have had a lot of days in the eighties and a few hours in the nineties. That is a lot better than snow.
We will have been in Texas for one hundred and eighty-three days this coming Wednesday, May 16, 2007. We think it is time to get out of the state so we are going to go about four miles into Oklahoma. On the way down here we stopped at a campground in Thackerville, OK. It is a nice place except for the sand burrs there. I think that place has more sand burrs than anywhere we have seen except an area near Kaw Lake in Oklahoma. Maybe there will be a few less in the spring than there were last fall. At least I can hope. We will be in Oklahoma for two weeks or perhaps more and then on to Kansas.

Till Later This Is Doug Of
PEACE ON THE ROAD