Tulips in the valley!

We took a drive off island and into Mt Vernon this afternoon. I had forgotten that this was smack dab in the middle of the 2007 Skagit Valley TUlip Festival. Traffic was a AWFUL with everyone trying to get off the highway and on to the roads that would take them by the tulip fields. It was really kind of sad to see, as the fields that used to be full of tulips and daffodils and iris blooms are mostly gone now, and are concentrated into one or two groups of fields run by big companies. Washington Bulb Company and Roozengarten. What flowers there are, are beautiful, but not nearly the same as driving down every road and seeing field after field in bloom like a patch work quilt.

ANother sign of Farms being sold off to developers. I wish I could have seen this country when the white man first came here. I have seen pictures of trees as big as houses, and it was awesome. I remember when I was a little girl and the fields were all in bloom, it too was just awesome. THe Dutch had come and settled the skagit Valley and the Delta, and diked it up and turned it into fertile farmland. THe bulbs were legendary.

I will try to go back and get more pictures like I do every year, because I know that soon, there wont be any more flowers growing there. It will be houses, and condos and it just wont be the same any longer.

So sad!