"Texas Hill Country Wildflowers" by petirrojo

While April may indeed be the "cruelest month" in many parts of the world, in Texas Hill Country it can also be one of the most beautiful!

Highways are edged with a colorful broidery of native wildflowers, thanks in part to efforts sponsored by former first lady, Lady Bird Johnson. (To learn more about her efforts, go to Wildflower.org

Just outside of Fredricksburg (a little ways northwest of San Antonio) you cannot miss a trip to WildSeed Farms.

Brilliant swathes of purpley blue, crimson splashed with random oranges, delicate pastel pinks, and vivid yellows fill the eye -- and best of all, these are species native or appropriate to the area and best able to cope with the vagaries of the Texas climate!

When you think of cactii, generally the images that come to mind are of tortured, spiny limbs and dull grayish green colors.

Of course, assumptions like this are often misguided -- at least part of the year! Springtime, when cactii are in bloom (and often for very short windows of time) is the desert at its most lovely and colorful. Parts of the Hill Country and areas to the south of San Antonio are arid and support a variety of cactii.

They say that paintings and photographs of the famous Texas Bluebonnet are a tiresome cliche but it's almost a rite of passage that any photographer or artist of any note will, if travels bring him or her to Texas, at some time succumb to the rich blues and delicate splash of white that is the state's most famous flower.