“This is the real Texas,” Simon Romero writes in the Escapes section of today’s New York Times, “where flowers on the wrong side of a fence can be lunch for cattle.” Not so, actually. Cows won’t eat bluebonnets, the most famous Texas wildflower. If you omit to poison them or mow them down, your pasture is no use to your cattle. Lady Bird Johnson had to campaign on behalf of wildflowers because ranchers considered them a nuisance.
For wildflower viewing, Romero recommends Gonzales, through which we drove a couple of weeks ago. For contrast, the town also has a county jail converted not long ago into a museum. Its vitrines display shivs and handguns confiscated from inmates, and upstairs there’s an indoor gallows. Escapes section indeed.
