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Touring the Ranch with Laura Bush

First lady Laura Bush at the ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Gordon Johndroe for NPR /
First lady Laura Bush at the ranch in Crawford, Texas.
Bluebonnets, the Texas state flower, grow on the Bush ranch.
Susan Feeney, NPR /
Bluebonnets, the Texas state flower, grow on the Bush ranch.

President Bush's top getaway, his ranch in Crawford, Texas, is also the place where Laura Bush seems to find the most solace. NPR's Ketzel Levine gets a rare tour of the ranch with the first lady, who discusses her efforts to restore native grasses and plants to part of the 1,600-acre property.

Levine describes the Bushes' three-year-old ranch house as "a contemporary, lean and low-slung building, made of glass and honey-colored stone. All around it, where we're standing, wind bends the buffalo grass, and reckless spills of wildflowers puddle along the ground."

Mrs. Bush says she feels "very fortunate" to have a place to get away. "There's something in a way that is reassuring about being outside and working in the garden," she says, "and that is that time does pass and that life will go on and that all of us, everyone who lives here on earth, has this beautiful earth to live on and to seek solace with when we're outside."

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Ketzel Levine
NPR Senior Correspondent Ketzel Levine reports for Morning Edition.

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