Spring, the Sweet Spring...

The first signs of spring are arriving... green sprouts are poking through the soil, birds are checking out nesting spaces, and Billy Bob is checking out the birds. We still may have a few days of frost before us, but this is the time when Texas is most like California: clear, bright days and crisp, sharp nights.

In my earliest memories, when Highway 10 between our house in Pasadena and our grandparents' house in Redlands passed mostly through farmland, smog was not yet a daily occurence. Our grandparents' house was surrounded by orange groves, and sheets hung out to dry in the "winter blossom season" (as our grandfather called it) came in delightfully scented, perfect for pulling over our heads and telling ghost stories when we were supposed to be in bed asleep.

The best-known spring flower here is the Texas bluebonnet, of course. (It is known elsewhere as the lupine flower.) When we first moved here, we were on the edge of town, and all the open spaces were filled by bluebonnets in the spring: fields of flowers just a little darker than the sky. My little girl, standing among them for her photo, had flowers to her knees.

Later, the paintbrush and black-eyed susans came into bloom, but less spectacularly, as the grass was higher. And then the heat settled in, and the fresh green of spring gave way to the bleached landscape of summer, when all the native plants "estivate."

The cycle is beginning again, little by little...