Tulips!

[mmegaera]

The Skagit Valley in northwestern Washington state grows more bulbs commercially than the Netherlands does, and the results in the spring are rather spectacular.

My friend Loralee and I made the tulip festival there our annual birthday jaunt yesterday, and I wanted to share some photos I took.

The first thing we actually saw wasn’t tulips.  It was a huge flock of snow geese, out in an empty field chowing away:

Snow geese in the Skagit Valley.

Then, a couple of miles later, we found tulip fields:

Tulips, as far as the eye can see.

And more tulips.

And yet more tulips.

After a pleasant waterfront lunch of fish and chips in the rather touristy town of LaConner, we went to the display gardens at Roozengaarde, which I think is the biggest bulb grower in the valley.  At any rate, they’ve got some seriously spectacular display gardens:

So much color!

My eyes just soaked the color in.

They even had a maze made of flowers.

It was a beautiful day, and there were lots of us there enjoying it.  I’m glad we went on a weekday, though, because I suspect the weekends are pretty much a zoo.

But, oh, it was pretty, and my eyes are happy, and it’s officially spring.

Mirrored from Repeating History.

Comments

[nishatalitha]

What gorgeous flowers and colours; what a lovely way to spend your birthday.

[mmegaera]

It always amazes me how this all happens just for me every year [g].

[thnidu]

Beautiful!

As I scrolled up, reading my reading page from older to newer for a change, an instant's glance at those photos made me think I was looking at the pictures Rene and I took in the Netherlands in 1973. And clearly the Dutch (Roozengarde: what an appropriate name, rose garden) have learned where to find more land for their beautiful crop.

[mmegaera]

My parents went to the Netherlands in tulip season one year, and a few years later after my dad died, I took my mother to the Skagit Valley. She told me she was more impressed with the Skagit Valley [g].

[thnidu]

I'm pretty impressed... Ah! One reason is there's lots of room so the fields can be HUGE.

[mmegaera]

This is true. One thing that boggles my mind is that bulbs are supposed to be planted in places with good drainage -- yet both the Netherlands and the Skagit Valley are prone to flooding. That makes no sense to me.

But as long as the bulbs thrive, I guess it doesn't matter.

[thnidu]

If they didn't have good drainage, wouldn't they be already underwater?

[mmegaera]

Well, yeah, but the ground is very saturated in this part of the world in the wintertime.