driving across Texas and random things

Texas is great. Where else can you just randomly drive past tons and tons of places that look like this? I saw all sorts of places like these in the last week.


Everywhere on the way back to Dallas on I45 looks like this these days:


Sometimes there are bluebonnets, a few or a whole lake, but always the greenness, the lovely trees, the fence, the sky, everywhere. Usually with other wildflowers, too.

A few hours ago, my husband finished taking an 8-hour engineering test! We are both so glad it's over, his studying took up almost as much time as a part-time job for the last 5 months. I made brownies for him tonight and ate a lot of the batter just now. We are going to Copeland's tomorrow to celebrate, and I am going to drink tons of Mardi Gras punch and eat lots of shrimp and pasta.

Yesterday, my brother's car broke down for good, (which he'd been expecting since Novemeber) in the middle of Texas, and he had to sell it to a junk yard in the middle of nowhere. It "threw a rod" or some such thing. My brother had to wait for 6 hours at McDonald's in a town called Gun Barrel City, until I could get there to pick him up. Even though he had a ton of books with him, and a sketch book, it was still a long day. My drive from Dallas to Gun Barrel City (never heard of it) was so beautiful, and I saw so many lush seas of bluebonnets, this is exactly what the road looked like:


Well, it was four lanes, but that was the only difference. And around dusk, I saw a field with no bluebonnets, but it had really, really big puddles in it, and lovely trees, so that looked like the Wood Between the Worlds!

Then I picked up my brother from McDonald's, with his two huge tupperware containers of books and other things that had been in his car. It was dark by then, and as we drove we just talked and listened to music, and it made me really happy to hang out with him. We went to spend the night with one of my best friends, whose birthday it was, and I got to give her some things that I had meant to mail to her. We saw her last weekend when we went down to meet Libby, but this was kind of a surprise visit. Surprising to all of us, and it means that I have driven some 25 hours or so since last Saturday! But driving is worth it, to see the people and the countryside.

This morning I took Stephen the rest of the way to College Station and came back to Dallas, just in time for work. We drove through the most wonderful fields, with magical-seeming trees and wildflowers and grasses. Those fields feed my soul somehow. It was so good to be out of Dallas. I don't really think Dallas deserves to be part of Texas for many reasons, but not least of them is that it does not even have the awesome normal grocery stores that the rest of the state enjoys. Well, neither does Ft. Worth, but it's at least better in all other ways.

I LOVE all the countryside in Texas, but north of Houston is one of the prettiest places in the spring and summer. It is a shady, glowy green, like I imagine Ireland must be, with flowers and wild-looking trees and old fences. I wish I could have taken pictures of my drive on TX30 from Huntsville to College Station this morning. I tried to find some kind of like it online, but nothing would really equal the trees. Here's what the glowy green was like, though. Even though I saw greener, this was the only picture that reminded me of it enough:

I think it's the trees and the green that gets me, more than the bluebonnets, even. And when there's an old house or barn or truck in the field, I love that too. This is what I miss when I am stuck in this town. I cannot wait to live out there someday and have a great big garden.