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bluebonnetsI’ve been jonesing for Texas for the last few days. For a while I couldn’t quite figure out what prompted this sudden fiending for home—especially the southern Hill Country (around San Antonio) and all its various charms—and then it hit me:

It’s bluebonnet season! 🙂

Even though I haven’t lived in Texas for 8 years now (I didn’t realize until JUST. NOW. that it’s been that long. 😦 *SOB!*), somehow I instinctively knew it’s time for bluebonnets back home.

Every Texan “gets” the magic of bluebonnet season, when otherwise nondescript green fields erupt into riots of purplish-bluish bluebonnets (and red Indian paintbrushes—let’s not forget about the faithful, annual companions of our beloved state flower), heralding the return of spring to the Lone Star State. There’s actually an entire website dedicated to bluebonnet sightings, and if you Google “bluebonnet festivals,” you might be shocked that Texans are so crazy about a bunch of little wildflowers. (No, you won’t. We’re crazy about a lot of things. Especially stuff that’s uniquely ours.) But IMO that’s actually one of the things that’s so magical about bluebonnets: they’re wildflowers! They just do their thing, year after year, and we’re all delighted as all get-out, like it’s somehow a new experience every year. (It is.)

THIS is what I’m talking about:

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NOTE: None of these are MY photos; if you are the owner of one of these images and want it removed, please contact me.

Gorgeous, right? 🙂 (Correct answer: “Yes ma’am!” Don’t forget the “ma’am”—you’re in Texas now.)

Most Texans have had our pictures taken in fields of bluebonnets when we were growing up, or we’ve taken pictures of our kids in fields of bluebonnets when they’re growing up, or both. It makes me more than just a little sad that so many years of Glam’s life have passed (and will likely continue to pass) without pictures of her in blue-and-red-speckled expanses of God’s country. Oh, I’ll live, and so will she; but I’m not gonna pretend I’m not disappointed. I mean, can’t you just picture Johnny Lingo—my LARGE, manly-man Tongan husband—standing in a field of these glorious little wildflowers with a look of childlike wonder and glee lighting up his whole face…?     *POP*     Yeah, me neither. But he’d totally indulge me. And ya know what? Oddly (and wonderfully) enough, sometimes all that aloha makes me feel a lot less homesick. 😉