"Spring...An Experience In Immortality"

 Spring has always been my favorite time of year and the first buds and blooms always turn my thoughts to digging in the dirt and hopes of beautiful fragrant flowers soon. 

Seems the emergence of the growing season, when earth awakes again, has inspired a lot of others to express feelings about Spring also and some of their thoughts are below. These photos include those I took last spring on a wildflower tour and the results of what I planted in the dirt last spring. I just planted my annuals last week and am afraid the wildflowers are not going to be as abundant this year for lack of rain. I will be
headed back to the hills soon to check them out and take more scenic shots. I've started a series of longhorn/bluebonnets paintings I intend to give for gifts and I need some more original backgrounds. I can always add a few flowers if I can't photograph enough. :)

"It's spring fever. That is what the name of it is. And when you've got it, you want —oh, you don't quite know what it is you do want, but it just fairly makes your heart ache, you want it so!"

—Mark Twain

"The beautiful spring came; and when Nature resumes her loveliness, the human soul is apt to revive also."

—Harriet Ann Jacobs

Morning Glories are glorious.

"The force of Spring—
mysterious,
fecund, 
powerful beyond measure."

—Michael Garofalo

“You can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep Spring from coming.” 
― Pablo Neruda 

"Spring—an experience in immortality."

—Henry D. Thoreau

 “When spring came, even the false spring, there were no problems except where to be happiest. The only thing that could spoil a day was people and if you could keep from making engagements, each day had no limits. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.” 

― Ernest Hemingway

"Expect to have hope rekindled. Expect your prayers to be answered in wondrous ways. The dry seasons in life do not last. The spring rains will come again." ...(Please send them to Texas soon!"

—Sarah Ban Breathnach

“Is the spring coming?" he said. "What is it like?"...
"It is the sun shining on the rain and the rain falling on the sunshine...” --Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

That blue patch in the distance are bluebonnets. 

This is typical Texas Hill Country

“Spring is the time of plans and projects.” 
― Leo Tolstoy

"Never yet was a springtime, when the buds forgot to bloom."

—Margaret Elizabeth Sangster

“In the spring, at the end of the day, you should smell like dirt.” 
― Margaret Atwood, Bluebeard's Egg 

"Science has never drummed up quite as effective a tranquilizing agent as a sunny Spring day."

—W. Earl Hall

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.” 
― Rainer Maria Rilke  

"Spring is nature's way of saying, "Let's party!"

—Robin Williams

“I enjoy the spring more than the autumn now. One does, I think, as one gets older.” 
― Virginia Woolf  

"An optimist is the human personification of spring."

—Susan J. Bissonette

“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything." (Sonnet XCVIII)” 
― William Shakespeare

"I love spring anywhere, but if I could choose I would always greet it in a garden."

—Ruth Stout

“I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer.” 
― Dodie Smith, I Capture The Castle

“It was such a spring day as breathes into a man an ineffable yearning, a painful sweetness, a longing that makes him stand motionless, looking at the leaves or grass, and fling out his arms to embrace he knows not what.” 
― John Galsworthy, The Forsythe Saga

And Spring arose on the garden fair,
Like the Spirit of Love felt everywhere;
And each flower and herb on Earth's dark breast
rose from the dreams of its wintry rest.

—Percy Bysshe Shelley

I do get lots of butterfly's but they are difficult to photograph. I also get

many monarchs on their migratory way back to Mexico every fall. 
They love the lantana we have in the flowerbeds and sometimes there
are dozens of them feeding at the same time.

This is one of the revolving "Bevo's"...mascot of the University Of Texas.

I've intended to do a painting for my daughter who

graduated from there and this is the year I plan to

get that inspiration done...and trust me....Bevo's going to

be standing in the Hill Country in a field of bluebonnets after

I relocate him. I never thought a football field was

any way comfortable for a cow...they cut the grass too short.