Tag Archives: Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

Roses are Red…

…and so are some tulips!

There’s a new meme in blogdom hosted by The Tablescaper called Oh, the Places I’ve Been. I’m sharing more from the Skagit Tulip Festival in Washington State. The fields and garden I visited were Roozengaarde. Today it’s all about red. Yesterday I posted Tickled Pink.

It seems like red tulips might be fast bloomers. I was interested in all these spent blooms that are in the trenches.

The focus on a few of these are on the mountains in the background. It really was the first great weather day since Easter. We have a quiet weekend ahead for which I am grateful.

I’m linking up with The Tablescaper’s new meme starting April 19th. Click on image to see the rules and join the party.

A NEW LINKING PARTY - click for details

Tickled Pink…

On Tuesday I made a morning trip to the Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley right here in Washington State. The weather was right and my day was free so I hopped in the car and headed an hour north.  I’m starting my photo sharing with the pink tulips…

You don’t have to go to Holland to have a wonderful tulip field experience. There were rows and rows of pink, red, purple, yellow and some variegated varieties.

“The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is one of the destination events for the Pacific Northwest, held from April 1-30. Every spring hundreds of thousands of people come to enjoy the celebration of spring as millions of tulips burst into bloom. As with all things governed by Mother Nature, the tulips bloom according to their own schedule sometime during the festival. The tulips allow us to share our corner of the world and showcase Skagit Valley agriculture.”

Wednesday was a semi productive day around this old house. I cleaned out some mystery broth from the freezer and used up our frozen ham leftovers from Easter to make a big pot of Split Pea Soup. I bought rubarb for the first time from a farm stand in Skagit Valley after visiting the tulip fields and made a coffee cake. I’ll share the recipe on MGCC soon. Sounds like our 2 days of sunshine are coming to an end. How is your week going?

Tulips!

The Skagit Tulip Festival

“The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival is one of the destination events for the Pacific Northwest, held each year from April 1-30. Every spring hundreds of thousands of people come to enjoy the celebration of spring as millions of tulips burst into bloom. As with all things governed by Mother Nature, the tulips bloom according to their own schedule sometime during the festival. The tulips allow us to share our corner of the world and help us to showcase Skagit Valley agriculture.

Mary Brown Stewart started growing tulips in 1906 with bulbs from Holland, but tulips were “only a small part of the crop and the whole operation was of modest size” (Barrett). In 1926 her son Sam Stewart started the Tulip Grange Bulb Farm near LaConner. Marinus Lefeber, a friend of Sam Stewart, moved their Whatcom County operation down to a farm along Memorial Highway near Mount Vernon. The farm was in business until 2002. Other bulb growers joined them after 1945. By 1997, 700 acres were used for bulb farming, with a value of $42 million.”

I never get tired of visiting the tulip fields. Besides the fields there are gardens to visit, too.

Saturday Smiles…

This sign is on the stairwell at my hairdressers salon/home. It made me smile and I hope you smile, too.

Before the tulips bloom fully here in Washington the daffodils make us smile.

Sometimes a different color tulip gets in the mix and the daffodils try to share the glory with the tulips…

Hope your weekend is off to a good start. If the weather cooperates I’ll be mowing the lawn and Dear will be doing some painting. What are your plans?

Tulip Festival in the Skagit Valley

Tulips

By A.E. Stallings

The tulips make me want to paint,
Something about the way they drop
Their petals on the tabletop
And do not wilt so much as faint,
~
Something about their burnt-out hearts,
Something about their pallid stems
Wearing decay like diadems,
Parading finishes like starts,
~
Something about the way they twist
As if to catch the last applause,
And drink the moment through long straws,
And how, tomorrow, they’ll be missed.
~
The way they’re somehow getting clearer,
The tulips make me want to see—
The tulips make the other me
(The backwards one who’s in the mirror,
~
The one who can’t tell left from right),
Glance now over the wrong shoulder
To watch them get a little older
And give themselves up to the light.
~
On this past Sunday after Dear picked me up from the airport we headed straight to the Skagit Valley for lunch and a quick trip to some tulip fields. We are really blessed here in Washington to enjoy amazing flower festivals including tulips, lilacs, lavender, daffodils, and of course our state flower the rhododendron. I will be sharing lots of tulip photos but decided to start with a poem and a few shots since this is poetry month, too. Blessings…
~
Here are the photos of our lunch before we headed to the fields. We ate at Nell Thorn in La Conner. A restaurant we highly recommend. Dear had a lamb burger that was amazing and I had a quiche that was more like a souffle. I also had to taste their soup of the day which was a spicy bean garnished with cilantro. Yummy!
~

Friday’s Fave Five! ~ Easter Edition…

Time to sit down, take a deep breath, and consider the blessings of this past week. Now visit Susanne at Living to Tell the Story to join in or to see some favorites. Thank you Susanne for hosting this great exercise…

 

Easter, Easter, Easter! I love Easter. I love that our Faith is defined by what Jesus did on the cross on our behalf. The whole Lenten Season culminating on Resurrection Sunday and now the days leading up to Pentecost are great days to focus and be refreshed. So here are my 5 favorites from this past week…

1. Getting together with my sister Lana G! and keeping our Russian Heritage traditions going by baking the Russian Easter bread and making and molding the traditional sweet cheese spread. I have to get more cans to bake the bread in by next year. Someone at our Easter table let it slip that she might have some in her garage. Along with these traditions watching my daughter color the Easter eggs is always a fun time.

2. The night before Easter I went to the opening Sounders Soccer game. I went to a nearby park and ride that was offering special buses to take fans to Qwest field. My bus ended up being real special as I was the only one on it!! The bus driver and me. I thought of you Thom! This was one of those really big metro buses, too. I had to chuckle. Too bad our team lost…ugh. On the bus trip home there were more people but the bus driver recognized me right away…

3. Easter was such a nice day of celebration for us. We went to a baptism of 2 little sisters we know. So sweet. We came home to get ready to host our Easter meal with my DIL’s family. There were 12 of us and we had a good time eating, sharing and laughing.

4. Whoohoo! I finally got to meet some of the Mennonite Girls from MGCC face to face on Tuesday. Five of the Canadian Mennonites had a field-trip down to the Skagit Valley to see the tulips and we all met up for lunch in La Conner. It was like we were old friends. Each gal is so unique yet so cohesive in the group. I don’t know if that’s the right word but I hope you understand what I mean…

5. Tulips, tulips, tulips! I love tulips. To see these lovelies like the sea before your eyes is absolutely amazing. I praise God for creating tulips and I’m so glad those immigrants from Holland settled in the Skagit Valley and grow them for our pleasure and for their livelihood!

Keep scrolling down to the next post if you’d like to see some tulips in the fields…

 

Have a great weekend everyone!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

I’m Not Tired…

…of tulips, are you?

I do believe the pink ones are my favorite. Which are your favorite?

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

Tulips!

 

Row upon row yellow, pink, red, purple.

 

I took a quick trip North last Thursday because we were promised a window of time without rain. I wanted to see the tulips before all the crowds started coming.

 

It was dry for my hour drive up until I took the exit for Mt. Vernon to head to the tulip farms. Then it started pouring!!

 

Most of my photos had to be taken out of my car window.

 

I was amazed at the beauty of this lovelies blooming row upon row.

 

 

 

 

 

It was wonderful to get the effect of a sea of tulips when you didn’t focus down the planted rows.

 

 

 

It really is a treat to see and if you ever are in the Northwest in April make sure you make it to the Skagit Valley!

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.

More to Come…

…a little tease of the wonder I saw today.

 

I’ll show more on Saturday or next week after Easter…

Photobucket is holding all my photos that I stored on their site from 2007-2015 hostage replacing them with ugly grey and black boxes and asking for a large ransom to retrieve them. It is a slow process to go through all my posts deleting the ugly boxes.