A Tray of Jewels
“Here are the tulips, budded and full-blown, their swoops and dips, their gloss and poses, the satin of their darks.” - Margaret Atwood
April took wandering Veena to the Skagit Valley in Washington State to visit the tulip fields and soak in the beauty and joy of celebrating spring with a splash of color.
Did you know that Tulip trading in Holland was one of the first recorded speculative bubble or asset bubble in history going back all the way to the mid 1600s?
Tulip mania was a period during the Dutch Golden Age when contract prices for some bulbs of the recently introduced and fashionable tulip reached extraordinarily high levels, with the major acceleration starting in 1634 and then dramatically collapsing in February 1637. In many ways, the tulip mania was more of a then-unknown socio-economic phenomenon than a significant economic crisis. It had no critical influence on the prosperity of the Dutch Republic, which was one of the world's leading economic and financial powers in the 17th century, with the highest per capita income in the world from about 1600 to about 1720. The term "tulip mania" is now often used metaphorically to refer to any large economic bubble when asset prices deviate from intrinsic values.
The tulips in the Skagit Valley in Washington state first originated with Dutch settlers who brought bulbs with them when they arrived here. Now the bulbs that are harvested here are exported to Holland.
We left Seattle early in the morning to make the drive to the Skagit Valley. On the way we stopped to admire this Big Cedar Stump that remains as evidence of the giant trees that once forested this area. Over 20 feet in diameter and 200 feet tall, this huge Western Red Cedar was believed to have been 1000 years old.
And drove into Spring. The daffodils and tulips swayed in the cool breeze, a splash of beautiful color. Everyone’s cameras were out as we oohed and aahed at the sea of color.
The Roozen Garde where we made our stop has beautiful fields full of the various colors and at various stages of the blooming cycle so that people can enjoy the beauty throughout the tulip festival which lasts through the end of the month of April.
There were just so many beautiful colors and such a variety that it was hard to pick a favorite but at the end these sunset colors were amongst my favorites but then the pinks, the purples, the mixed colors. Each variety and color were carefully labeled so that you could identify it in a catalog should you want to order bulbs which are ready in the fall.
After enjoying the beauty of Roozen Garde, we made our way to the town of La Conner for lunch outside in the beautiful sunshine at a restaurant with a view of the rainbow bridge.
After lunch we wandered around the town and peeked into antique stores and other novelty stores and stopped for delicious ice cream. La Conner ice cream treats you really well. A lady in front of me ordered 2 scoops of 2 different flavors and was given what looked like a bouquet of ice cream scoops in a cone. Her face was a study! Forewarned I got just the one scoop in a cup which seemed like about 3 or 4 scoops at most ice cream shops. A definite treat.
So, Tulips apparently can be grown in a field only once every three years. At least one of those years the field is left fallow with no crop. This year we had to walk for tulips fields which were away from where we parked. I found these interesting sights on our walk.
A sea of reds and pinks.
Men and women were harvesting the tulips and preparing bunches that were then loaded on a truck and driven away. These are the tulips I saw for sale the next day when I visited the Pike Place Market in Seattle.
An incredible experience that I thoroughly enjoyed, and I did not need to get my passport stamped to travel here.