Skagit Valley Tulips

In Explore April 22, 2011, #251.

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The early forecast for yesterday (Thursday, April 21) was for a beautiful sunny day and I worked well ahead so that I could take the day off and make the annual visit to the fields and displays of the Skagit Valley bulb growers. As the week progressed, however, it began to look less and less like a good day and when I got up that morning it was raining hard and my prospects looked grim.

By 9:00, however, it looked a little more promising and so I headed off, hoping that the skies would clear and the last of the rain would go away. When I arrived it was still sprinkling a bit at times and the sky was overcast. I spent the time driving around getting some pictures of the daffodil and tulip fields, though that is increasingly difficult withe parking restrictions that forbid any parking along the roads

Before noon, as the skies were clearing, I stopped at Roozengaarde's, one of the principal bulb growers, but renowned for their massive displays of tulips and other early spring flowers. After paying the $5.00 entrance fee I spent the rest of the day, until 4:00 in the afternoon in their gardens taking pictures and enjoying the nice weather, since the sun had come out intermittently and the day was quite warm.

The place is a surfeit of color, with every kind of tulip imaginable and it is hard not to go nuts taking pictures. I believe I took nearly 800 pictures and have posted some of them on my blog. By 4:00, however, I was weary, and had had enough both of the crowds and of the flowers and headed home for a quiet and relaxing evening, some supper and a Canucks hockey game (on television).

Part of the fun of going to Roozengaarde's is that one also has access to some of their fields behind their gardens and can see and photograph the flowers against the backdrop of the mountains, which were never very clear yesterday. It is also nice to be able to see the tulips close up and to see the amazing colors in side the tulips and their unusual stamens and pistils, in their own way as beautiful as the flowers.