Wildflower Roads.
Thank you, God, for Texas highways like garden paths. Thank you, God, for the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin. Thank you, God, for a First Lady who long ago advocated roadside beauty, while the nation giggled and groaned over her Karnack-and-Alabama pronunciation of "trees and shrubs." I love you, Lady Bird.

Texas Book Festival.
And I love you too, Laura. Mrs. Bush helped found the Austin event to remind writers and readers that our own literary landscape stretches as widely as our distant horizons.

Elmer Kelton.
Yes, Larry McMurtry, Horton Foote, and John Graves walk our prairies as giants in Texas literature. So does this San Angelo author who finds grace and dignity in common cowboys and sodbusters. Elmer also crafted novels about black cowboys (Wagontongue) and buffalo soldiers (The Wolf and the Buffalo) long before other writers discovered them. His classic The Time It Never Rained belongs in the top 10 of the best Texas books.