Ground zero

 

W. Pflugerville Parkway at N. Heatherwilde Boulevard in Pflugerville proved to be ground zero this spring for prairie wildflowers, which abounded on all four quadrants of the increasingly busy intersection. Thankfully it wasn’t the wildflowers’ last stand—at least not yet, but all the land around that intersection is highly likely to get developed in the next few years. Consider that when I moved to Austin in 1976, Pflugerville claimed about 700 residents; by the turn of the millennium some 16,000 people lived there, and the current population estimate is 69,000.

While the southeast corner of the intersection already has a convenience store on it (and a convenient place to park it is), the land adjacent to the store is still land; you’ve already seen how densely flowerful it looked on April 29th. The northwest quadrant of the intersection is home to a church, but at least the people in charge have so far let the property around the church go to wildflowers; let’s hope that enlightenment continues. The southwest quadrant of the intersection has also been home to many wildflowers this spring.

By the time of my May 17th visit I’d already taken many photographs in those three quadrants on several earlier stops. This time I finally walked over to the northeast quadrant, which already sports a sign saying a zoning variance has been requested for that property: development can’t be far away. When I got close I happily found that horsemints (Monarda citriodora) were coming into their own on the site; they’re the little towers of flowers. Blooming among and around the horsemints were firewheels (Gaillardia pulchella) and prairie parsley (Polytaenia nuttallii). In addition, some healthy Maximilian sunflower plants (Helianthus maximiliani) bode well for the fall, providing the land hasn’t gotten razed by then.

 

 

© 2023 Steven Schwartzman

 

 

 

 

Advertisement