Meanwhile, in Texas...

...it's bluebonnet time!

That is my sole surviving stepbrother, Bob Houston, who turned 84 in January, sitting in a field of bluebonnets this week near Ennis, Texas.

The photo was taken by Bob's lovely wife, Linda. I do not know and cannot explain why Linda was not the one sitting in the field and Bob was not the one taking the photograph. Life is strange in many places, but never stranger than in Texas.

The bluebonnet, which is the state flower of Texas, blooms in March and April each year.

Spring has arrived...

...and the daffodils are lovely, yes, but out in Texas, where I grew up, Spring means one thing and one thing only -- bluebonnets!:

(Photo by Michael Wayne Barrett, 2015, courtesy of Texas Farm Bureau)

...and more bluebonnets:

(Photo by Michael Wayne Barrett, 2015, courtesy of Texas Farm Bureau)

...and still more bluebonnets, shown here strewn with an occasional Indian Paintbrush:













Well, enough of that.

In Georgia and Alabama, Spring always means azaleas and dogwood blossoms, which I may show to you at a later date. But to the young folk, Spring means prom season. Dress-up time! Here is my grandson Sawyer last Friday evening with his prom date:

Aren't they stunning? Brace yourself now for something entirely different. Here is my grandson Noah last Saturday evening with his prom date:

Unless this young lady was his prom date:

Or this young lady:

Or this young lady:

Or perhaps these guys. I can't decide if they remind me more of Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi in The Blues Brothers or Tommy Lee Jones and Will Smith in Men In Black:

I give up. All I know for sure is that they are:

And here is my granddaughter Ansley, who had just finished singing and dancing in the final performance of the musical Crazy For You, which enjoyed a three-night run last week at her school. Crazy For You is a 1992 re-working of Gershwin*s 1930 musical Girl Crazy with a few extra old Gershwin standards added for good measure. Ansley played one of the Zander Follies girls, all of whom sported platinum blonde wigs. She is shown here with my grandson Matthew, her brother, who just happened to be home on spring break from Duke University:

Finally, my grandson Elijah and my grandson Sam are missing from this post because they are probably somewhere playing baseball and golf respectively, celebrating the arrival of Spring in the way they like best.

My grandchildren are my favorite flowers in any season.

From the archives: It’s bluebonnet time in Texas. (April 8, 2008)

I grew up in Texas, my family having moved there from Rhode Island the summer before I entered second grade. I left Texas at the age of 20 -- how can it possibly have been 47 years ago? (Editor’s note. It isn’t; it’s 51. --RWP) -- but even though I now live in an area of the country where every spring is absolutely gorgeous with white dogwoods, pink dogwoods, purple redbuds, purple tulip trees (Magnolia soulangiana), white Bradford pear blossoms, pale pink cherry blossoms, azalea bushes in many shades, daffodils, phlox, forsythia (I could go on and on), every year around this time I become nostalgic for flat land, mesquite trees, and a field filled with bluebonnets and Indian paintbrush.

The photograph (click on it and it will get larger) could have been taken from the front yard of my childhood home (it wasn’t, though --I found it on the internet). All it needs to make the scene complete is a dirt road and what people in Texas call a “bob-war fince” (barbed wire fence). If the photographer had then turned and taken a snapshot in a different direction, you might see a pasture full of Hereford cattle, the reddish-brown kind with faces of white. And if the photographer had turned in still another direction, you might see my mother picking blackberries or peaches or roses or lilacs, or you might see my father coming home from work, carrying his lunchpail, walking up the lane all the way from the paved road where his carpool dropped him off.

As an old poem says, “Backward, turn backward, O Time, in your flight, / Make me a child again just for tonight!”

I don’t really want to go back; it was not an idyllic period of my life. I am just missing the bluebonnets today as only someone raised in Texas can.

“I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers...”

Let’s just say, for the sake of argument, there are four ways you can spend Sunday afternoon:

1. In the park with George:

(A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, oil on canvas by Georges Seurat, 1884-1886 -- click to enlarge)

2. In rehearsal with Sutton Foster (8:45)

3. With Texas Bluebonnets and a Pit Bull named Sharky (0:41).

4. With Texas bluebonnets, a Pit Bull named Sharky, and a Guinea Pig named Penelope (1:52).

Please tell us which one you prefer and why.

If you pick number 2, state whether you would rather be on stage or in the audience.

If you pick number 4, state whether you would prefer to be Sharky, Penelope, or the bluebonnets.

If, all in all, you would rather be a bee, buzz off.