Up early on this beautiful spring sunny day, plans to get out of Dodge. Somewhere. Not too strenuous. Cynthia had never been out to the Wooden Shoe Tulip Farm outside of the town of Woodburn an hour South of Portland if one takes the more scenic Hwy 99 East route. We did.
I've been going out to this tulip field for years, on and off since the 80's. It used to be just a tulip (and daffodil) farm. They sold bulbs by mail order - and now on the internet - and let folks into their fields to enjoy the blooms while in season. Now it's a complete festival with rides for the kiddies, craft and food booths and this weekend a wine tasting festival in the display garden. A real money making enterprise with corporate sponsors and you can't blame 'em for turning a profit. Luckily we got there before the road in was completely jammed, but the parking lot was already pretty full at 10:30 on a Sunday.
Back in the day, if you went during the week you could have the place pretty much to yourself. Especially if it was a typical Northwest Spring Day (cloudy to rainy) which were actually my favorite days because of the way the tulip colors 'popped' against the moody gray sky and the puddles reflected the image back to you if the sun did happen to come out. Electric chartreuse of the new foliage on the trees made you feel like you'd taken drugs and if you were really lucky you'd get a thundershower and have threatening purple-y green skies for atmosphere as well.
The insides of a most beautiful magenta pink tulip.
An orange one.
And a yellow one.
It was far from cloudy this time out and getting plenty warm - and more crowded - by the time we'd rounded the entire field taking photos. Cynthia was hauling around a serious camera and tripod taking as many pictures of the people as of the flowers. We headed back to town stopping for "Full Scottish Breakfast" - at 1:30 in the afternoon - at the Highland Still House overlooking Willamette Falls. Sat out on the deck to enjoy the day. Wafting fragrance of paper mill and a speaker cleverly disguised as a rock on the cliff past the deck rail playing the same Irish fiddle tune over and over again though Cyn swears that all Irish fiddle tunes sound the same... The chips were amazing and the toast cold and dry.
2 comments:
Them's some purty flowers! Nice shots. Things are starting to grow here finally!
Oh good that it's thawing up your way! Everything is late this year. Even here. This is the last weekend for the tulip fest - would have been over nearly a month ago in a 'normal' year - and it's raining! I might go out again.
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