I am spending two weeks working for my friend Kate at her Fraser Valley Tulip Festival. The forty acres of tulips are like a flag of colour spread across the land and you have to walk beside or down the middle of the plantation to get a sense of just how many millions of tulips there are in each ribbon of colour.
The flowers are grown for their bulbs, which are harvested in May and then dried over the summer to be planted in the greenhouses in the Fall for cut flowers as early as next February.
It is truly a pleasure to go to work every day and greet the hundreds of visitors who come to enjoy the sight. On the weekends the crew greets thousands.
The photos are by Kate's sister Julie Gilbert-Stevens. I hope to have some more photos next week to share.
Oh my....that is fantastically beautiful! I love it!
ReplyDeleteWhew. I thought you had written 2093 words. Not that you would not have had 2093 worth reading, but I am checking blogs while the munchkins munch lunch and I was worried I would not have time. But, I was greeted with lovely tulips. Ahh.
ReplyDeleteHubband's family lives right next door to a tulip farm, but I've never been there for the festival, so thank you for the pretty pictures.
What fantastic photographs. What a lovely experience among all those flowers - kind of like a dream....
ReplyDeleteLovely photos.
ReplyDeleteBut why are they allowing the bulbs to flower if they are preparing them for next year.
Mind you I really do not like those yellow ones with the red virus running through them, but that is just me. And is that Red in the upper photo actually that shade. It seems to be in the very back of the 2nd shot. It's one of the real headaches with the digital cameras and plants, where you can go and print there and then, to check the truth of the print.
F8hasit: Hi! It is fantastically wonderful to work amongst all that beauty too, but today it was really, really busy out there!!!
ReplyDeleteTracey: Since a picture is worth a thousand words...and I have two pictures...plus 93 actual words...but I'm sure you've already figured that out. I've seen some tulip photos on your blog, too, not so long ago from The Skagit Valley Tulip Festival I think?
Kate: yes...dreamy...:)
Vince: I do think the light must have been a bit interesting the day these photos were taken, because they do look that intense on a cloudy, dramatic sky day. The yellows with the red 'virus' are striped bellona, I believe, not my favourite either. The reds are actually more deeply pinkish red in real life, and called Ile de France. I had other photos but they transferred onto my blog as tiny little pictures so I will take some of my own, hopefully, and post them later.
Thanks for the comments, everyone. So good to hear from all of you, and I hope you are all enjoying a glorious spring in your corner of the world!
Vince: one more thing I forgot - the flowers are allowed to grow until they are just past their peak, then the heads are chopped off and the energy then goes into the bulb until late May when they are harvested. My friend's husbands family (Dutch) own a huge greenhouse operation that produces millions of flowers for the global flower market.
ReplyDeleteOh my, now those gorgeous images bring me right back! Many summers spent with Jay, working in the flower fields and bulb factories of Holland. Mind you my romantic Mucha-inspired images of picking flowers for the summer were quickly shot down by the sheer hard labour of it! But I found romance in other places. (And by that I mean poetic romance, LOL! Though our time there did play a big part in our early years together!)
ReplyDeleteThanks so much for the sweet reminder. C x
This is stunning beauty, with the majestic Rockies in the background!
ReplyDeleteThose are beautiful! I need to find some bulbs that can grow in partial shade so I can put them on my patio.
ReplyDeleteI love the rainbow of colors in the field! Absolutely amazing!
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