From my recent visit to the Skagit tulips. The trunks of the trees were at least 6 or 8 feet (2-3 meters) in diameter. They were OLD.

Red and pink tulips under sunshine and clouds in Mt. Vernon, WA

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Friends drove me to Seattle and their car had VERY clean car windows.

Monochrome view of Seattle’s Great Wheel, from the Viaduct

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This is a season of floral abundance, that’s for sure. This graceful, deep-pink-and-white Japanese magnolia is blooming in my backyard today. The flowers are about as big as my hand.

Pink and white Japanese magnolia bloom in Seattle in April

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As a brief break from tulips, I thought I’d show you a new tree (to me), a star magnolia. The pretty white flowers were very fragrant, and 2 or 3 inches wide (5-8 cm). It was growing in a sweet little arboretum in Everett, WA, the Evergreen Arboretum & Gardens.

Fragrant white Star Magnolia blooms in April in Everett, WA

They also had a lovely and fragrant viburnum tree of some kind. Looking on google images for the name of this plant, I find Viburnum carlesii ‘Aurora’, or Korean spice viburnum, which looks very similar, except that the plant I saw seemed to be a tree, or maybe it was just a very mature shrub. But I want one.

Fragrant viburnum blooms in April in Everett, WA

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The late afternoon light made this row of red tulips with white edges especially scenic.

Late afternoon light illuminates a row of red tulips at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival

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Yesterday I was blessed to be able to visit the Skagit Valley tulip festival. Fields of hundreds of acres bloom with color. You will see some tulip photos here in the next while, that’s for sure.

Red, pink and purple tulips bloom in Skagit County, Washington

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We had one sunny, warm day. One. But it was perfection, and here in Seattle, everyone surely appreciated it. I went outside and my tulips were in full bloom.

Orange tulips bloom against a blue sky

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Here’s another image from the same Connecticut park as the scene below. Early spring is the sweetest season.

Forsythia and a beckoning bench in the spring sunshine

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It was exactly at this time of year when I took this spring scene at a park in Connecticut. Isn’t it just the picture of spring?

Forsythia blooms and pink trees reflect in a Connecticut pond scene

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Sometimes beauty appears in surprising places.

Sun sets over an empty tennis court in very early spring

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