"Texas Then" and "Texas Now" continued. . . »
Favorite Child #4

When I first came to Texas, it was April and the wild flowers in the Hill Country had started to move into their red and yellow blooming time (which follows the blues and the pinks). I had been told that the countryside near where I settled was "God's country," and I believed it. I had never lived where wild flowers were so prolific and so varied, particularly along the roadsides.

Some years later, I discovered that long haul truckers were once given wild flower seed packets by the Texas Department of Transportation so that they might throw them out the window as they sped by.

This does not counteract the beauty of the spring bloom here for me, but it makes me wonder what these highways looked like pre-manipulation. Did they look more like byways?   continued. . . »