A Botanical Symphony
Here are a handful of images I made last month on the way back from dropping Sadaf off at the airport in Austin. After dropping her off at the terminal, I found my way to the airport’s observation area, a quiet picnic area tucked behind the airport’s maintenance facilities from which to watch the planes come and go. For me, plane watching is a distant second to train watching, but I was content enough to set up my beloved Costco hammock chair in the grass and watch the hustle and bustle of the airport, trotting up to the fence to stick my camera lens between the chain links whenever an interesting plane was poised to take off.
As I watched the planes, the sky darkened to the west, signaling the arrival of a line of storms. For this second picture, I really like how the bright paint of the Southwest planes stands out against the dark sky and compositionally, how the Southwest planes are facing each other but at different distances from me such that one appears much bigger than the other.
Once Sadaf’s plane took off, I started heading back east towards Bryan. When I had passed through Bastrop on the way to the airport, I saw what I thought was a species of sunflower blooming profusely on the roadsides. On the way back to Bryan, I decided to stop and check it out because, while it looked like a sunflower, it was too short and the flowers too small to be Helianthus annuus, the common sunflower, a frequent denizen of roadsides and abandoned fields. I found a nice patch of plants at the back of a neighborhood, on land that borders Bastrop State Park. Free from the dangers posed by angry homeowners or speeding cars, I walked along the road photographing and admiring the botanical splendor. The sunflowers in question turned out to be a species I had never met before, the cucumber leaf sunflower, Helianthus debilis. They were at their peak, thriving in the growing intensity of the June heat, even as many other species in the sunflower family—namely, Coreopsis, Gaillardia, and Rudbeckia—had flowers that were fading or had already gone to seed.
Much of my botany photography has focused on detailed close-ups of single flowers, and while that has brought me immense joy and appreciation for the diversity of form and function of flowers, I find myself increasingly drawn to a wider perspective, taking in the entire assemblage of plants in order to document the diversity of the community. I find my love of plants melding with my appreciation for classical music and see the community of plants as a symphony, each species of plant a different instrument contributing a unique tone and timbre to the orchestra. Just as the strings are the foundation of the orchestra, so the foliage is for the plants. In the same way the strings section is composed of violins, violas, cellos, and double basses, the foliage is the combined vegetative effort of many different species of plants, each with different leaf shapes, varying pubescence, some with prickles, and others with sticky resins, but all of it working to generate the energy necessary to live.
While the foliage is interesting in its own right, it is complimented by the inclusion of flowers, adding visual complexity and attracting animals—humans and pollinators, alike—to the community. In the scene above, I see the sunflowers playing the part of trumpets, their sound the brightest, most exuberant, and most easily recognized. If you listen a little longer, the sound of high brass begins to differentiate between trumpets and horns, and if you look a little longer, you will begin to notice the small red splashes of firewheels (Gaillardia) growing amongst the sunflowers. They might not be as tall or as showy as the sunflowers, but they match the sunflowers in enthusiasm and intensity.
On the right side of the image, plump spikes of creamy yellow flowers belong to the bee balms (Monarda). They might have gone unnoticed until now, owing to the radiance of the sunflowers commanding the spotlight, but they have been there all along, providing a darker tone and contrasting structure to accentuate the sunflowers and firewheels. I see the bee balms as the low brass: you might not notice the sound of the trombone or euphonium as immediately as that of the trumpet or horn, but once you hear it, you cannot unhear it.
And lastly, what is the basis of this community? Where do we find ourselves? A pine woodland, or rather, an opening in a pine woodland. Maybe you’ve taken the broken stumps of former pine trees for granted. Maybe they’ve gone unnoticed entirely. But it turns out that the least noticeable of all the members is actually the most important. The pine tree is the tuba of this botanic symphony. It is the instrument on which the symphonic sound is built. It grounds the orchestra and is content to play the supporting role. The pine, like the tuba, is omnipresent, and because it is always there, it sometimes blends into the background as though it was not a member of the symphony but instead a stage accessory like the curtains or the conductor’s podium. But the pine tree is what makes this a pine woodland, as opposed to an oak woodland or juniper woodland or bluestem grassland, or any other community. Those are other symphonies, with different sounds and different instrumentation; but this, this is a pine woodland, and these are the plants that make up its symphony.
Leaving the symphony of sunflowers behind, I continued east, taking the back roads to see what other botanical gifts I could find. I did not find anything blooming that rivaled the sunflower spectacle, but I did happen across a couple cow pastures dotted with stately oak trees. I love seeing and photographing old oak trees and feel an almost spiritual connection to them. They connect me to the past in the same way a historic courthouse or train depot does. In fact, oaks feature very prominently in Texas history. Anglo settlers gathered in the shade beneath dense and sprawling oak canopies, carrying out business transactions, legal proceedings, and community events. Oak trees were the historic buildings before our now-historic buildings were even conceived. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center has embarked on an ambitious and endearing project to grow trees descended from culturally significant live oak trees throughout Texas. The progeny are gathered together at the Wildflower Center as a living testament to the role that these majestic trees have played in the history of Texas. They do not look like much now since they were planted less than ten years ago, but I can not wait to come back in a few decades and see them in all their grandeur.
Having ventured so far east from Bastrop on the back roads, I decided to continue on to Giddings and see how the restoration of the Lee County Courthouse was coming along. The restoration has been ongoing for at least two years now, a duration I can measure with great certainty because Sadaf and I considered getting married at this courthouse in July of 2022 until we found it surrounded by a chain link fence with construction equipment and porta potties on the courthouse lawn. Now, at least two years into the renovation, it seems like there is still much to do. From my vantage point outside the chain link fence, the interior looks completely gutted, and it seems like they are in the process of replacing all the windows. Even though it has been a lengthy renovation and I am eager to see the courthouse in its finished state, I am happy that they are restoring rather than replacing this historic courthouse, and I hope the time spent on this renovation is a consequence of the care and attention to detail with which they work to bring this courthouse back to its former glory.
While most courthouses in Texas serve as the center of dense commercial districts, the Lee County Courthouse is unique in that the courthouse square is occupied, at least in part, by private residences. One of the most historic homes on the courthouse square is the Schubert-Fletcher House, located just north of the courthouse. This home was built in 1879 by Giddings merchant August Schubert. After a brief stint as the home of Concordia Lutheran College in the final years of the 1800s, the home passed to Bylis Fletcher, Texas Legislator and writer, and remained in the Fletcher family for most of the century. The house now serves as the Lee County Museum which documents the Indigenous and Anglo history of the county.
To the south of the courthouse, directly opposite the Schubert-Fletcher House, is 188 East Richmond Street, done up in a patriotic red, white, and blue paint scheme, serendipitously matching the mail truck that was parked in front of the house when I photographed it.
The house has a wonderful oak shading its north side, and I can imagine that the bay windows to the right of the front door offer incomparable views of the courthouse across the street.
There are of course some historic commercial properties on the courthouse square and adjacent blocks. The First Presbyterian Church faces the northeast corner of the courthouse and is on the adjacent corner from the Schubert-Fletcher House. The sanctuary was built in 1886 and survives mostly in its original state with the exception of a few minor repairs.
From Giddings, I continued east and stopped in Caldwell with the intention of train watching. It was already afternoon, though, and the heat and blazing sun cut short my time spent track side. But before I started the last leg of the trip back to Bryan, I made a couple pictures in downtown Caldwell, a town that I have driven through countless times but have never stopped to photograph.
Despite being the county seat of Burleson County, Caldwell seems to be quite a sleepy town. It gets a lot of traffic with folks passing through on Highway 21, and in the last few years, they’ve added the standard cohort of fast food restaurants. But downtown Caldwell has struggled to inspire a renaissance that so many other downtown districts have enjoyed. That’s not to say Caldwell is not a nice town. Indeed, it’s quite the opposite, with its fair share of ornate Victorian homes, streets shaded by mature trees, and quaint churches. But the commercial district is comatose. The concrete in front of the old food mart is cracked, with plants slowly poking through. There’s a trumpet vine climbing the yellowed cinder block wall and now stands taller than the building itself. The windows are dusty but not dusty enough to obscure the fact that the store sits empty and seemingly untouched.
Diagonal from the food mart is a structure (to put it generously) that I have wanted to photograph for awhile now. Four brick columns support a parapet that, at some point in the past, was white washed but has since weathered to partially reveal the underlying red brick. The brick is supported by steel girders, and besides a concrete foundation that looks like it could be new, the rest is open air: no walls, no windows, no roof. The chain link fence surrounding the brick storefront suggests, ostensibly, that the reconstruction of this building is a work in progress, but it has looked this way since the first time I wandered through downtown Caldwell in 2019. I think the remnants of this old store are symbolic of Caldwell and the regrettable fate of rural places everywhere. For many towns, the historic district is little more than a facade, and in many cases, the facade, unable to support its own weight, is propped up in order to prevent—or maybe only placate—the little bit that remains from crumbling down.
