Ennis' smiles stem from big bluebonnet crop

06:24 AM CDT on Friday, April 6, 2007

ENNIS -- The state flower is setting blooming records, just in time for the annual Bluebonnets Trail Festival.

Or, perhaps it's in honor of the 10th anniversary of Ennis being designated the Official Bluebonnet Trail of Texas by the Texas Legislature.

The festival is turning 56 with a bumper crop as fields along the city's famed Bluebonnet Trails look like blossom mirages, whole lakes of the state flower.

"They're as thick as water," said Sandy Anderson, the perennial chair of the Bluebonnet Trails Festival, April 13-15 in Ennis. "They're just looking perky as ever -- it's been six years since we've had a year like this."

While some years, winecups, wild mustard and other wildflowers push their way to prominence, bluebonnets dominate the palette this year, with the exception of a few blazing-orange fields of Indian paintbrush.

Sugar Ridge, Lone Oak, Cody Road, Walker Creek, Highview -- all grist for the shutterbug's mill, and all roads lead to scenic beauty. This year's bluebonnet stalks are tall, the white-tipped petals full at their medicine-bottle blue base. It's a wildflower aficionado's dream come true -- thanks to the ample moisture of late 2006.

"We got good rain in the fall, so our wildflowers are better this year -- this seems to be a bumper crop," Ms. Anderson said. "We expect the bluebonnets to be at their peak between Easter and the Bluebonnet Trails Festival."

Last year's festival was a hit, but the bluebonnet crop was muted by contrary weather in the months preceding the season. This year, it's a different story, and the word is out. By Tuesday, visitors were swamping the Ennis Convention & Visitors Bureau to pick up guide maps and champing at the bit for the Ennis Garden Club's Bluebonnet Trails Festival.

Ellis County and the bluebonnets are featured in a new novel. John J. Dwyer, a former longtime Bristol resident, will be at the festival to promote and sign his fourth book, When the Bluebonnets Come, which tells the story of Katie Shanahan, a woman looking back on her childhood growing up in the Ellis County bluebonnet country.

The book features numerous scenes in Ennis as well as fictional locations

"My wife grew up there on the land, my daughter grew up there. The land was the inspiration for the book, out there beyond the cities, the Texas that people have forgotten. It has a lot to do with the traditions, culture and heritage that we came from, even if now we're city dwellers," said Mr. Dwyer, now an adjunct professor of history at both Southern Nazarene University and Oklahoma City Community College.

"One of the themes of the book is the people of the land being challenged by the encroachment of the big cities, big money and big plans for paving over pasture and forests," he said.

"The beauty of the land was, to me, a redemptive and really blessed experience. In one place, the main character says, 'When you get back to the land, you get back to God.' There's no way to accomplish that quite like being out there in his creation, where you are directly communing with his creation," Mr. Dwyer said.

Mr. Dwyer's previous books include the epic historical narrative, The War Between the States: America's Uncivil War, as well as two sprawling historical novels, Stonewall and Robert E. Lee, published by Broadman & Holman. Mr. Dwyer will sign When the Bluebonnets Come from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday, the festival's opening day, at Interior Ideas, 211 W. Knox; from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. April 14 at La Galleria, 101 S. Dallas; and from 1 to 3 p.m. April 15 at the Farmhouse, 105 N.W. Main in Ennis.