Wine Cup
While in Japan spring sneaked (or snuck, depending on your origins. In East Texas, use snuck) in through the back door. There were several spring wildflowers blooming along my trail this Easter Sunday in Austin. Although normally suffocated by the various exotic weeds that dominate any space given them, there are still a few lovely spots in the city where the colors endemic to this area may be appreciated.
My favorite wildflower is wine cup. I know; as a Texan I should vote for bluebonnet. But bluebonnets and paintbrushes are ubiquitous and collectively gaudy. The wine cup is subtle, rarely collecting in sizable aggregations. The color of the flower morphs with age, from a dark Cabernet to a light Zinfandel before it fades.
Passion Flower and Lantana
Gregor Mendel. Emily Dickinson. Margaret Morse Nice. One a geneticist, one a poet, and one an ornithologist. Each burrowed to deeper truths within arm’s reach, close to (or at) home.
Each morning we (my wife, Virginia, and I) walk through the oldest parts of Austin, Clarksville. Once the plantation of Governor Elisha Pease, after the Civil War he sectioned part of his land for his emancipated slaves. Freedman Charles Clark established the community of Clarksville in 1871. He subdivided his land among other freedmen from the Pease plantation.
