Spring flowers

You folks are lucky – you only lost an hour of sleep on one weekend. I lost an hour two weekends running! This is because British Summer Time (BST) and Daylight Savings Time (DST) are very slightly different. If you’re at all curious about the whole history of this, take a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time - and it doesn’t have anything to do the farmers, who insisted that it wouldn’t make any difference because animals can’t tell time! Apparently it was proposed as recently as last year that it be abolished, and there is even talk of Scotland becoming a different time zone – obviously, being so much further north, BST is more disruptive for them.

Ford Explorer

Embassy Suites

At least Hertz made up for it by giving me a shiny brand new Ford Explorer for this trip. But then Marriott put up their rates and couldn’t agree on a corporate rate with American Airlines, so I had to move hotels! I insisted on staying 3 nights at the Marriott, which gives me the 50 nights needed this year to maintain my “gold” status for next year! So I’ve moved to the Embassy Suites (part of the Hilton chain) – the picture below is actually taken from my room in the Marriott, so, as you can see, it’s not far away. I haven’t decided which I prefer yet. My new room does have a fridge and a microwave, and a separate lounge area. It also has a restaurant, with complimentary breakfast and happy hour every day. The pool is inside, but then I never went in the Marriott’s outdoor pool in 18 months of staying there! It’s also an architectural monstrosity that doesn’t seem to be able to decide whether it’s Spanish or modern.

In New England, the fall foliage is the big attraction, and the local TV news, newspapers and websites all report on the best places to see it in all its glory as the leaf colour-change advances through the area.

Bluebonnets

In Texas, it’s the spring flowers, which are just beginning to bloom in abundance in this part of the state. There’s a toll-free telephone number you can call to tell you which highways are the best to travel to see carpets of wildflowers by the roadside. To see some of them, visit http://www.tpwd.state.tx.us/park/wildflower/, and there are a couple of pictures of two of the most prolific – the Texas bluebonnet and the pink evening primrose – below (both taken just outside my hotel). Towards the summer, sunflowers will be growing wild in profusion alongside most highways. The Texas Department of Transportation (http://www.dot.state.tx.us/) actually sows 33,000 pounds of wildflower seeds each year along 79,000 miles of state highways. The sight of such a huge variety of wild flowers (which, I have to say, put ours to shame, both in number and size) seems to contradict our traditional image of Texas as a vast barren desert landscape.

Primroses

 

The news here is very obviously biased away from what’s going on in the Middle East, and the death of the Pope, and the trials and tribulations of Charles and Camilla, provide the news media with welcome diversions. Because the church here is so much stronger than at home (and also because I’m in the middle of the “bible-belt”), the Pope’s death attracts huge coverage, even though the Americans are only too aware that there is no way an American cardinal will be elected to replace him. The Charles/Camilla fiasco is reported almost with glee, and I’ve heard on at least one occasion the British pre-occupation with pomp and ceremony referred to as “silly”. For a country that has no history to speak of, that’s a bit rich.

This weekend I’ve had little time to do more than work and change hotels, even though the weather has been glorious. Assuming the weather stays good (and that’s a fairly good assumption), I think next weekend would be a good time to jump in my shiny red Explorer (about 14 miles per gallon!) and head out to see the wildflowers at their peak. What was that toll-free number again …