Wildflowers and more great barbeque...

Theme gardens at Wildflower Center

On Monday, we set out for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower
Center. The center, founded in 1982 by Lady Bird Johnson and actress Helen Hayes, is located on a couple hundred acres, with thousands of native Texas flowers and trees on display. Every aspect of good stewardship of the land is at play on the campus. To conserve resources, a central irrigation system collects roughly 10,200 gallons of water per inch of rainfall from the roofs of all the sandstone structures. Nice.

Quote from Lady Bird Johnson

We walked to the top of the Observation Tower, which doubles as a cistern, where we could see the meadows on one side and the courtyard and several gardens on the other. The center was designed to protect and preserve America's native plants as well as explore ways to conserve natural landscapes.

We also hiked around some of the trails taking in the diversity of the scrubby plant life that grows in this region so well, including several kinds of prickly pear cactus (some with 2 inch spines all over!). Ouch.

The chief flowers we've seen along the highways are bluebonnets and Indian paintbrushes (both in the middle of the picture above) and a yellow-green flower we have so far not been able to identify, but that I heavily suspect is probably a weed. The bluebonnets are, of course, blue and are blooming everywhere this year. Apparently last year none bloomed due to the drought, but with this year's spring rains, they coat the hills and sides of the roads with their colorful petals.

Bluebonnets and prickly pear

Ken and the Huisache tree

The Indian paintbrush, a soft red-orange color, is found frequently interspersed with the bluebonnets. We've also seen the huisache trees' rust orange color on our travels around the Hill Country region of Texas. But at the Wildflower Center, all the wildflowers of Texas are in bloom, with splashes of color in among all the cacti and cedar trees.

We had a delicious lunch at the Wildflower Cafe, including some bright red hibiscus mint iced tea. So tasty. We really enjoyed our visit, especially with the delightful temperatures and low humidity.

Don, Sandy and Ken at the County Line BBQ

We met Don again for dinner, this time with another former co-worker, Sandy. The four of us dined at the County Line BBQ on the Hill, a regular barbeque haunt of this group during the 80's. Just like the Salt Lick on Sunday, we found the crowd on Monday at the County Line mercifully thin. Perfect.

We proceeded to eat way too much while watching the sun set from the ringside view this restaurant has atop the hill on which it's perched. The food was great...sausage, brisket, beef ribs, pulled pork and lots of sides. Very yummy. We topped the evening off with a bit of the County Line's homemade vanilla ice cream. What a great day!