Bluebonnets

Old ladies left their walkers on the grass in front of Montclair retirement home before climbing on buses for an excursion to look for bluebonnets.

The lady sitting across the aisle from me recently moved to Dallas from North Carolina. She never heard of bluebonnets. We Texans enlightened her.

The bluebonnet is a wildflower that blooms all over Texas in April. It resembles a snapdragon with multiblossoms on each little stalk. Each flowerlet is a miniature of an old-fashioned blue sun bonnet, such as ladies wore a hundred years ago, hence the name “bluebonnets.”. On a sunny day nothing is lovelier than a hillside covered with bluebonnets like a fluffy blue down comforter reflected above by the blue sky.

As we headed south from Dallas on Interstate 45, Daisy and I sat right behind the driver. Jackie kept the bus speed at 60 miles per hour. “If I go any slower, I’ll get a ticket.”

From the windows of the speeding bus Daisy and I spotted beside the highway clumps of bluebonnets flashing by from time to time. But as we looked at the rolling hillsides, we saw fields bright with daisy-like yellow wildflowers. Beyond the edge of the highway we saw no bluebonnets.

We rode so far I thought we might be headed for Houston, when Jackie turned off into side roads so narrow that I wondered how she could navigate the big bus around the turns. At time trees arched over the road in tunnels reminding me of little country lanes in England. Where there were no trees, occasional clumps of bluebonnets grew along the verge.

On these roads far from the city, we saw big new houses, veritable mansions, as if Texans aped British nobility with their country estates. Handsome horses grazed in green meadows. But no bluebonnets.

After driving for hours around the countryside, where mansions surrounded by green meadows gave way to trailer homes on two-acre plots, Jackie gave up and headed the bus back to the interstate and Dallas. We got home in late afternoon.

On my telephone I found a message from my friend Pat. I called her back and told her I had been on a futile chase, going all over Texas hunting for bluebonnets.

Pat said, “There is a big field of bluebonnets around the corner from my house. People are parking cars on both sides of the street and getting out to take pictures.”

Pat lives less than a mile from Montclair.