A More Global View of the Tulips and Daffodils

While the color and translucence of the tulip petals is a limited seasonal burst of natures expression, the way the farmers grow them is even more impressing.

More Tulips

Some of the tulips are elegant and stately. Like Audrey Hepburn in one of her movies.

Tulips and a Daffodil

Funny how we often assign a color to an object when very little, if any, of it is actually that named color. For example, the white tulip above is many shades of yellow, a pinch of green, and perhaps a few other subtle colors tossed in on top of the little bit of while we see.

Tulips in Colors Galore

I often wonder, when I see so many colors of tulips, if this ability to be bred to nearly any color is not what the attraction to tulips is really all about. they don't last long. There is a limited range of soils and climates they can thrive in. You really need to be in the right place at the right time to enjoy them.

But when you are in that right place at the right time, there is a world of color to enjoy.

Even the white ones have a multitude of colors in them to delight the eye. This one below, with the red tulips and the green leaves in the background, is showing the shades of white to good effect.

 

Skagit Valley Tulips

No set of flower photos from the PNW would be complete with a few images of tulips. Today we start a series to really make this complete. It is tulip time in the Skagit Valley to our north and the Tulip Festival is in progress.

Tulip Town

Leaving Mt. Baker, I drove west to catch I-5. This took me to Bellingham and then I turn south on the expressway. A short way south of Bellingham, I saw a cloud bank in front of me as I drove, clearly rolling in from the west. It was a combination of fog and cloud and seemed to cover everything. Indeed it did. From that point onward, I was in clouds for the next 5 days until the sun finally came out.

But a stop along the way at a tulip farm called Tulip Town not far from Mt. Vernon (about midway between Bellingham and Everett) once again brought a bit of sunshine into the day.