I went to Chappell Hill this past weekend with some dear sweet friends for the annual Bluebonnet Festival.  I had never been before.  It was a lot of fun and I got a lot of cute things…..including a large bird feeder made from a recycled good year tire! Wow!! The things that people can come up with…and the things that I buy:)  Anyway on the way there we passed fields of Texas Bluebonnets.  Despite the early hour there were families and friends in the fields having their pictures taken with the beautiful blue flowers.  As we enjoyed our day shopping and seeing bluebonnet this and bluebonnet that I began to wonder what exactly was the fascination in this floral frenzy.  Is it just the sheer beauty of the flower?  Don’t get me wrong…it is quite a beautful flower in its own right.  But say compared to a rose it doesn’t quite live up. Possibly the beauty arises from just the magnitude alone.  You certainly never come across hundreds and hundreds of roses in a field.

Maybe its a southern thing…or more precise, a Texas thing.  Do we take our photographs among the blue flora to represent our pride in the Lone Star State?  Historian Jack Maguire so aptly wrote, “It’s not only the state flower but also a kind of floral trademark almost as well known to outsiders as cowboy boots and the Stetson hat.” He goes on to affirm that “The bluebonnet is to Texas what the shamrock is to Ireland, the cherry blossom to Japan, the lily to France, the rose to England and the tulip to Holland.” 

Perhaps it respresents to many that spring has arrived.  A celebration that winter has passed and new life has begun.  A chance to start over…a re-birth. 

As we drove home I was amazed with how few places there were to park along the road in front of these fields of bluebonnets.  People posing and smiling everywhere!  I have known people to go on long road trips just for the opportunity to take pictures with the bluebonnets.  As a photographer you would have thought I would have stopped to take my friends’ pictures or maybe even been photographed myself.  Had I brought my camera along 🙂 … Looking back I think I would have taken a photo of the entire field with families milling about and little ones running through the blue beauties.  For whatever reason, maybe it’s all of them, that they want to photograph or be photographed among the bluebonnets they all know there is something special in capturing family and friends among these flowers.  And there is something special in that…

A little beauty, a little Texas, a little spring…. a lot of God.

My Sister~ Photographed by my Mom