Texans and Bluebonnets

It’s Bluebonnet season here in central Texas. The state flower of Texas and one of the first of the many wildflowers to spring up after the “long hard winter.” The fields and ditches are an array of colors. There’s something about the bluebonnet that gets Texans all worked up. Anywhere you go, you’ll see a vehicle parked alongside the road (often a minivan) and a mom-photographer snapping pictures of a baby in the flowers, or children, or there will be a professional photographer taking family photos in a ditch in front of a Shell gas station.

As the bluebonnet photos pop up on my Facebook feed, I realized that I couldn’t be a true Texan until I dragged my kids to the side of a freeway to get their photo taken. But, lucky for me, I happened across a very scenic patch of flowers while dropping Ella off at Girl Scouts last week. So, when I picked her up, I brought my camera.

Now, the girls were not really in picture form. Their outfits weren’t specially picked for the shoot, their hair wasn’t coiffed, and their faces were spit cleaned in the car. But, hey, we’re real people here. Bluebonnets don’t last forever, so we seized the day.

And you’ll see, my girls didn’t grow up doing this from babyhood. The photos I actually took time to crop and edit are the best I got. Yes, these are the best. At least the flowers and hills were happy to be photographed…

So, we just sit in these flowers?