Skagit Valley Tulip Festival 2012

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival 2012

It has been many years (6 years, actually - see 2006 post) since we last went to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival in La Conner, WA.  So this Saturday, we rounded up the family and visited again.  It didn't disappoint.  However, this year we didn't pick the large commercialized Tulip Town or Roozengaarde fields, but instead a quieter field, but one with beautifully contrasting swaths of yellow and red.

Here are some more photos that don't do justice to the beautiful colours there:

I loved this muddy ol' truck in the field.  A small group of Mexican workers were gathering armfuls of tulips (presumably the old blooms, although I couldn't see how they were different than any of the other blooms around us) and tossing them onto the truck.  I think it made for a neat photo.

Of course, the real aim of any such visit it to catch some nice photos of the family, especially the kids.  We got our share of our teenage daughter looking grumpy and squinting into the sun, and my son goofing around.  But then there were a couple of gems which made the photographic attempts worthwhile.

It's funny, looking back on these few happy and relaxed photos of the kids, that all of them were in the daffodil field, where we spontaneously pulled over to the side of the road, on our way while driving around to decide on a tulip field.  Once we were actually in the tulip field, it seems all the kids wanted to do was leave.  Reminder to self: Plan for an impromptu photo session prior to the real photo session again next time.

Friendship Tulips

I almost forgot to post a photo of my friendship tulips... Last fall, I found a fairly large bag of what looked like very pretty bi-colour tulips. So I decided to surprise my neighbour Helen, who has a wonderful little garden next to her driveway, which is quite underutilized (ever since she got tired of and removed the beautiful daffodils from there, and gave them to me). So I snuck over there, and planted up the tulips and also grape hyacinths in between (click the photo for a larger view). This Spring, we were all pleased with the result (photo from 2 weeks ago):

My own were not as noticeable, tucked in between plants in my fairly crowded front garden:

Then when I visited my friend Lily 2 weeks ago, I noticed the same tulips in her front yard. I had forgotten that I had shared some with her also. So I guess they have truly become "friendship tulips".

Garden Glimpses : Early May 2008

Here are a few more recent garden photos (click any photo for a larger image)... Sometimes an accidental pairing can have a pleasing effect, like these tulips blooming among the greenery of an iris. Oh yeah, I planned it that way. ;-)

I believe this is the first time I've seen this rhodo in bloom. Nice.

This is also the first time I have flowers on my Cornus canadensis (Bunchberry, a perennial dogwood groundcover). I'm very pleased, I was worried last year I would lose my few shoots, but it looks as if it's now established.

If dandelion were not so successful here, it would make an ideal flower. Deep-rooted, and such cheery yellow flowers. Look at this one among the rockery, I wished I didn't need to dig it out:

But sadly, I have dandelions by the dozen this year, as well as thousands of Carex pendula, which I am digging out by the wheelbarrow-full. My soil is a very rich garden mix (many, many truckloads of it were brought in to form a garden on top of the impenetrable clay beneath), so everything that lands in it, grows like crazy. If my weeds were edible, many of them would be "entree-sized".

The fruit trees are loaded in blossoms this year. Looking at the other fruit trees in the neighbourhood, it looks like it will be good year for fruit trees, all around. Here is my young bartlett pear tree, showing great promise this year:


Here is my Rainier cherry, about one week ago, in full blossom:

Agassiz BC Tulip Festival and Bison

My husband's parents recently moved out to Agassiz, BC, so we went to visit them on the weekend, and to check out the 2nd Annual Tulip Festival on Seabird Island, instead of venturing down to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The unseasonably cold weather meant that only half the tulips were in bloom yet, but still there was much colour to enjoy, as the following pictures will indicate (click any photo for a larger image).



Mount Cheam makes a majestic backdrop to the spring colour:

But in some unexpected way, so do these power transmission lines:


We also checked out a nearby herd of bison (buffalo), again with Mount Cheam as a scenic backdrop:

Their faces look like something out of a Star Trek movie, except these are the girls! There seemed to be one male, and seven females.

Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Today we went with our neighbours to the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival. The weather was wonderful - sunny, yet very windy (as it always seems to be, in that valley). Here are some photos from our visit.

The festival runs from April 1 - 30 this year. We were happy to finally get good (dry) weather on a weekend, before the festival was done. When it has been raining, the fields can be pretty muddy. Today they were dry, with very few puddles.

We enjoyed our visit afterwards to the town of La Conner, with its unique shops and galleries.