Bluebonnets and how to plant them

by Jayson May

The best known and most beloved of the wildflowers in State of Texas is, of course, the official state flower, the Texas Bluebonnet (Lupinus texensis). It graces fields and roadsides every spring with its stunning blue display and while it is one of the most easily identified of the Texas wildflowers, there are lots of things about this special little flower that most people don’t realize.

There are actually five other species of Bluebonnet besides Lupinus texensis, which is by far the most common. These include The Annual Lupine (Lupinus concinnus) which is found in the Franklin Mountains near El Paso; the Big Bend, or Chisos Bluebonnet (Lupinus havardii) which is the largest and darkest blue of all the bluebonnet species; the Perennial Bluebonnet, which is found in the Big Thicket area of Texas; the Dune Bluebonnet (Lupinus plattensis) which is very rare and found only in the panhandle of Texas; and the Sandyland Bluebonnet (Lupinus subcarnosus).

All of the variety of bluebonnets are in the Legume or Bean Family (Fabaceae) and they do well in poor soils due to their ability to fix nitrogen from the air to help them grow. They all grow in best well drained areas and prefer full sun. Most of the bluebonnet species are cool season annual plants, which germinate in the fall and grow their roots during the winter, so that as soon as it starts to warm up in the spring they can leaf out quickly and produce their flowers and make seed before they are killed off by the summer heat.

Because bluebonnets are annual plants, it is very important that they are allowed to produce seed each year, so that there will be another crop the following season. If the blooms are mowed down before the seeds are fully developed, the population of bluebonnets in that area will slowly dwindle away until they are all gone.

Here are some tips for growing your own Texas Bluebonnets.

• Plant the seed where there is a little or no competition with exotic grasses, such as St. Augustine or Bermuda. These grasses will choke out the bluebonnet seedlings.



• Plant in a spot that gets at least a half a day of direct sunlight.



• Plant in a well drained area. Texas Bluebonnets are thought to have originated in the Texas Hill Country in the gravely granitic soil around the Enchanted Rock area. So a hillside or rocky area is usually best. If that isn’t possible, spreading a 4 or 5 inch layer of decomposed granite makes a nice well-drained bed for starting bluebonnets.



• Be very generous with the amount of seed that you put out. For a minimum planting rate, use 1 lb of seed for every 2,000 square feet. But to get that picture-perfect display, use up to 10 lbs per 2,000 square feet.



• Be sure and press the seed firmly into the soil, but do not bury the seed more that 1/8 to ¼ inch deep.



• Plant the seed between September 15th and November 15th for the best results the following spring.



• And lastly, be patient. Not all of the seed will germinate the first year and sometimes it takes a couple of years to get that really knock-out display.

Often people call us at Native American Seed and ask about scarifying the seeds by using a blender or some other method. When you do that, you are encouraging all the seeds to germinate more quickly, and more of them to germinate at the same time. But if some unfortunate weather event comes along, more of your seedlings will suffer the same fate all at the same time, too.

Nature gave the bluebonnets those big, hard seeds so that they could germinate over time at their own pace... and so that a larger proportion of them would have a better chance of surviving one or the other extreme Texas weather event. We've generally found that it's best to cooperate with nature and plant the seeds as they are.

More on Lady Bird

Just a quick note from Sarito on a busy day here in Junction... there's a really nice op-ed piece in today's New York Times - "Lady Bird's Lost Legacy" by Lawrence Wright. Beautifully written, and has lots of information about her contribution that I, for one, hadn't known much about. Also discusses what has happened since the passage of the Highway Beautification Act, and how the next highways bill coming up in 2009 might be an opportunity to put the life and spirit back into what she started so long ago. Check it out: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/20/opinion/20wright.html?ex=1342584000&en=1df8ab40807a838e&ei=5124&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink

Honoring Lady Bird

by Sarito, with help from Bill Neiman and Dave Mahler

Life, I have noticed, when it moves in harmony moves in circles like the ripples created by a pebble thrown into a lake. Lessons come round to be learned again and again, each time on a deeper level. Synchronicities happen, and we are reminded of the rhythms and interdependencies of nature that connect us all.

I was thinking of that specially tonight, as I walked back home, just having made my very last visit to the New York office where I have spent the past 10 years, before getting on a plane at 8:30 on a Sunday morning to move back to Texas. One of my colleagues, on this last day, had by chance run across an article I'd written just after I'd concluded my last "circle" around my home roots in Texas and decided I still had more to explore out there in the world before I could truly come back home and settle down. The article features a picture of me, much younger and with much longer hair, in a cowboy hat. A circle, coming round again on a deeper level, as I make my way back home.

As I walk down the Greenwich Village streets at night, in a "saying goodbye" mood, it seems as if the whole city has conspired to give me one last look at the folks you can only find in the Big Apple. The guy who wears clothes crafted from blue plastic garbage bags, the lady who camps out overnight in my corner ATM bank lobby when she can manage to sneak in behind a carded customer, lying down there in her corner next to her bags and bundles, talking to herself... Tonight I speak to her, for the first time, as I leave -- "G'night sweetie" -- and she giggles like a delighted child. In the deli, the ambient music features two tracks in a row that are exact matches to the mix I had put together for my own goodbye party a few days ago-- and when I leave with my purchases, a young guy walking by wears a Texas flag and Kinky Friedman campaign slogan on his T-shirt. Where I've been, where I'm going. When I'm in tune, the song is playing everywhere.

In a stunning display of out-of-tune-ness, it seems that the Texas Department of Transportation was ordered, on the occasion of Lady Bird Johnson's recent and by all accounts very gracious departure, to mow down all the "overgrown" grasses and wildflowers within forty miles of her resting place, because -- said the guys on the job, if not the spin-meisters who tried to justify it later on -- it needed to be tidied up for the funeral cortege of very important people who would be passing by.


Dave Mahler, a man more in tune with the circles and rhythms of life than whoever it was that ordered the mowing -- who was it, anyway? -- happened to be driving by, and caught them in the act, stopped and asked what the H__ was going on, took pictures... For details of the massacre see his website.

As Dave points out, this passion for some sterilized version of "propriety" came at a time that would maximize destruction of the fall-blooming wildflowers -- a display that would have been a better tribute to Lady Bird, had they been allowed to bloom, than any of the speeches and eulogies that we humans have come up with over the past few days. And the very fact that this could happen "in honor of" a woman who spent so much of her life devoted to trying to bring us back in touch with the natural and the native, so we could begin once again to hear the song and the tune and the harmony of life ... is enough to leave a person speechless.

Bill and Jan had occasion to meet Lady Bird at her ranch... and Bill marks it as one of the most memorable moments in his life, sitting on the front porch of the 100-year-old home, in the company of Lady Bird and some of her closest friends... sitting in rocking chairs, overlooking a grove of grand old post oaks, surrounded by that comfortable silence that only the elders can create around themselves.


Out of nowhere, Dolph Briscoe -- rancher from Uvalde and former governor of Texas -- started talking to Bill about how one of the things he regretted most was his own, well-intentioned efforts in support of "growth" ... and by that he meant not the growth that happens naturally in the cycles and circles of nature, but the growth motivated by human greed. Growth for growth's sake. The kind of noisy, consuming, unnatural growth that drives us all deaf and blind to the rhythms of nature, and makes us absolutely incapable of taking just one moment -- surely only one moment is all that's needed -- to realize that the last thing on earth a person could do to honor Lady Bird Johnson would be to mow down the grasses and flowers she loved.


To see the follow-up to the story, and hear how TXDOT tried to explain it, see the following:
http://www.statesman.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/ladybird/entries/2007/07/13/txdot_suspends_mowing_of_high.html

The Clymer Meadow Virtual Tour

One of the great things about being a "blogmistress" is that I get copied into all kinds of interesting bits and pieces of news that fly around the Native American Seed community. This one came from Emily, who got it from the Native Prairie Association of Texas, shortly after they had organized a field trip to Clymer Meadow Preserve (managed by the Texas Nature Conservancy) near Celeste, Tx. They wanted to share some photos with those who hadn't been able to make the trip.
You can have a look here, at
Web Albums - Texas Prairies - Clymer Meadow...


From the Texas Nature Conservancy website: "Clymer Meadow (1,068 acres) remains one of the largest and most diverse remnants of the Blackland Prairie and one of the most scenic areas in North Central Texas. The Blackland Prairie is the Texas version of the tallgrass prairie that once stretched from near the Texas Coast to southern Manitoba. Because of the prairie's rich agricultural soils, more than 99 percent has been cultivated, making the tallgrass the most-endangered large ecosystem in North America."

I remembered going there long ago, but I was fuzzy about the details so I asked Bill. His memory is lots better than mine, and here's what he recollects:

... as for the clymer meadow, we have conducted conservancy harvests there a few times over the years. the first time back in the late 1980's. I lived in the old farmhouse on the hill with the harvest crew for three weeks. this was my first comprehensive gathering of all the ingredients for a real prairie restoration...of which we turned around and re-planted all the sacred seeds to expand the parkhill prairie, which is maybe 20 miles away. ol' pipe smokin' arnold davis was my mentor on this project...back in the day. he is no longer on this earth with us.

in later harvests, the native seeds were used to expand the clymer meadow preserve... and/or offered for sale to others in the blackland bio-region for ecological restoration purposes. the clymer meadow was the first prairie that westy and emily stepped foot on when they were but young chillin's. having been born and raised in the blacklands, I find it is one of those rare magic places...anytime of the year. -- bill

Dan's Nephew Killed in Iraq

Over the past weekend, our friend and colleague Dan Cochran (see the previous post) was enjoying a visit with his family in San Antonio when they got the news that his nephew, Anthony Bradshaw, was among six young soldiers, and an embedded Russian journalist working for Newsweek, killed on Sunday by a roadside bomb in Baqouba, Iraq. Anthony was a Specialist in the 3rd Brigade 2nd Infantry Division Stryker Brigade Combat Team, serving as a gunner.
He was quoted in an Associated Press article in March of this year, soon after he had arrived as part of nearly 100 Strykers who had been sent north from Baghdad into Diyala province and its capital of Baqouba to deal with Sunni insurgents, many of whom had gone to Baqouba to get away from the new "surge" related Baghdad security operations initiated by George W. Bush. Anthony's team from Ft. Lewis, Washington had been in Iraq since last June, and recently had their tours extended till October. His immediate family lives in El Paso, and the most personal article we've found about him and his death so far is on the local ABC news website.
Our hearts go out to Dan and to all of Anthony's family and friends.

The New Era - Part II

News from River Run Ranch
contributed by Dan the New Era Man as a follow-up to his "Part One" - see the link to it down in the right panel on this page. He finished this one a couple weeks back ... but we've been so durn busy we're just now getting around to posting it. And with it, launching the new "blog" addition to our website. Since Dan wrote this piece, by the way, there's been more rain! - S.

It's a beautiful Sunday morning here at the farm. The sun is shining for the first time in a while. Birds are singing, the rains have finally subsided.

We were somewhat blessed by those rains we so badly needed, but also somewhat cursed by them - well, not OUR rains, which weren't so heavy locally, but by those that fell in the surrounding counties. As you might know, we're sitting on about a mile of the Llano River, and out here in the western edge of the Hill Country, we usually depend on irrigation from the river for our fields. Here comes the part about the curse - our irrigation pump was totally submerged under the waters of the rising river! Seems some really serious rain had fallen on Rock Springs, 50 miles upstream, and as it passed by our place it nearly took the pump with it!

As I was driving the tractor this morning, my brain got to turning its gears around how much has happened in the 25% of a year that's just passed.

We finally finished the Frazier planting, which had been halted due to the rain east of here in New Ulm, TX consisted of over 200 acres of seeding, plowings, and spraying of molasses.

Jose, Beto, Johnny and I completed the Eagle Land maintenance, a restoration project on the river in downtown San Antonio that connects directly to the historic San Antonio River Walk. Which by the way also turned out awesome - if you ever get the chance to go there it is something to behold.

George and I got the Clipper Seed Cleaner fixed, and it's running like a fine Rolex watch. Which meant we could finally tackle the two huge piles of Atwater Coastal Prairie mix, and to make things even sweeter the test results are back - one of the highest germination rates / best-quality prairie harvests we've seen. George is a wizard, and definitely lives up to his reputation as "seed cleaner extraordinaire."

We finally got to burn our huge, 6-year-old brush pile, thanks to the rains - along with a successful controlled burn on our farm grasses.

Another important accomplishment was the cultivator rearranging and setting up to work on our New Holland TV 145 bi-directional tractor. The cultivator is set up on the cab end, or non-engine end, which allows us to push the implement in front of the tractor - giving the driver a better view for quicker response and more accuracy.

Looks like we're finally going to finish the Hacienda clean-up today, and to me, one of my greatest personal accomplishments is that I've saved enough money to buy me a new 4-wheel-drive pick-up truck. You know, I'm 52 years old and don't think I've got a lot of time to kill. Too many of us are busy trying to kill time, while time is busy trying to kill us!

The time is now, to do something positive towards the future as we speed further into the New Era. The era of trying to better not just ourselves, but also this beautiful planet of ours, Earth, third pebble from the sun.

While we take for granted our milk and honey here in America, my three nephews and a lot of your sons and daughters are fighting in a crazy war in Iraq. We should all be busy planting and restoring our country so that when they return home they'll see beautiful flowers everywhere.

Well... just like our farm, the catfish are in bloom. I don't know about y'all, but I'm going fishing. But before I go, I'll finish this writing - like I did the last one - with a song. The Byrds sang it in the 70s, they took it from King Solomon in the Bible. It's called Turn, Turn, Turn ...

To everything, turn turn...
there is a season
a time for every purpose under heaven
a time to be born, a time to die
a time to plant and a time to sow
a time to kill and a time to heal
a time to tear down and a time to built up
a time to weep and a time to laugh
a time to mourn and a time to dance
a time to cast away stones and a time to gather stones
a time to embrace and a time not to
a time to gain and a time to lose
a time to keep and a time to throw away
a time for speaking and a time for silence
a time to love and a time to hate
a time for war - and a time for peace

New Era Part II - The Visuals