Yes, it’s that time of year again.  The entire month of April is the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival.  Due to the onerous Health Nazis instilling fear in the population, the Festival was canceled in 2020 and 2021, regardless of the fact that the festivities are all outdoors.  This year, Mother Nature was not very cooperative, with the weather being overcast and rainy much of the time.  The tulips didn’t really bloom until the second half of the month.

So last weekend, Hubby and I finally visited the valley.  The weather was cool and overcast, which actually made it easier to get good photos, since there weren’t many shadows, even in the late afternoon.  In spite of the dull weather, there were huge crowds at the main flower-viewing site-we were stuck in traffic for quite a while, for busloads of tourists to cross the street from the parking lot.  So we found another nice field of varied-color tulips, and we were able to park on the side of the road and walk the perimeter of the field.

Here, you can see the even rows of red and yellow flowers.  I am always amazed at the “perspective” lesson you get when you stand at one end of the field and take your picture-look how the rows of flowers converge at the horizon to a point!

Now, getting a little closer:

You don’t often see rows of mixed-color flowers, but I really liked the red and yellow together.  The red ones with the lighter-colored edges were also somewhat of a surprise.

Adjoining the field was a pair of barns, probably belonging to the owner.

You can see one part of the field had already been harvested.  And this row could be entitled “end of the season”.

All that remained were the fallen petals.

We are very proud of our Skagit Valley tulip farmers-they are the world’s second largest producer of tulip bulbs for sale, after Holland.