April 18, 2003 - Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

We had attended the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival many times in Aprils past.  We would roam the fields noting the tulip, daffodil, crocus, and hyacinth's we wanted in our garden and then would order bulbs for pickup in September or October.  This year was different, we came just to look since we would not have the house in fall.  A few years earlier there were three big flower growers in the valley, but one had closed shop.  Of the two left, one charged to come into their fields and the other didn't.  The one that didn't was Roozengarde, part of Washington Bulb Company.  Since we were just looking we only visited Roozengarde.  All of these pictures are larger to make it easier to see the flowers.  Here are what the fields look like:

The colors overwhelmed our camera.  You might recognize these fields, lots of photographers come to take pictures and their pictures are published widely.

Roozengarde has smaller groups to show off each type of flower, here are a sampling:

Red Riding Hood has nice foliage also:

In the 1600s tulips with fringe brought the highest price, in those days it was a disease that killed the tulip.  Now they have bred them to look like this:

Rosalie is Diane's mothers name:

It was nice to come on a weekday, on weekends there are traffic jams during the festival.  There are also many events in the area for the festival, it's not just viewing flower fields.

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