Thor and Bear dog and I just made our annual pilgrimage to nearby Skagit Valley to wander through the spectacular tulip fields and soak up the acres of intense hues. Talk about color therapy! We Pacific Northwesterners, along with dense flocks of migrating waterfowl, flock to the rich flood plain near the mouth of the Skagit River every April, a welcome explosion of renewed life and color after months of gloomy gray.
First stop: Walking through the fields on the amusingly springy clay/mud tractor pathways, grateful that it’s not pouring down rain and we’re not collecting pounds of gooey mud on our boots. But it’s that rich soil the tulips love, and the Skagit fields are the largest growers of tulips, daffodils, and irises in North America, a world leader in bulb production and export.
Most of the fields are owned by the Roozen family, whose ancestors grew bulbs in Holland since the early 1700s. William and Helen Roozen arrived in Skagit Valley to start a business with 5 acres in the 1950s, and the family company now cultivates over 1000 acres.
After wandering with Bear through the fields, we head for the RoozenGaarde display garden (no dogs allowed inside – sorry, Bear) to enjoy the lovely blends of colors and styles, from enormous cup-shaped blooms to fringy exotics to miniature “species” varieties similar to the original wild tulips from Turkey.
(Turtle here is checking out one of these miniature species in our garden, from a RoozenGaarde bulb I bought years ago.)
The Turks cultivated tulip different varieties during the Ottoman Empire, and they were first imported into Europe in the 16th century, probably by an ambassador of the Holy Roman Empire to the Sultan. The Netherlands became the biggest growers, and soon the popularity of the vividly-colored flowers turned into an economic frenzy dubbed “Tulipmania.” Amsterdam merchants made huge profits, and an economic bubble developed that had single exotic bulbs priced at more than ten times what a skilled craftsman might earn in a year.
The price inflation eventually burst, with severe financial impacts to many in the Netherlands and elsewhere. Some journalists today compare Tulipmania to the subprime mortgage crisis. And Nout Wellink, former president of the Dutch Central Bank, described the recent Bitcoin debacle as “worse than the tulip mania – at least then you got a tulip, now you get nothing.”
Once we’ve seen the tulips, it’s Bear’s turn for a walk on the dike along Padilla Bay Slough and Nature Preserve, a haven for birds. He has to be on best behavior as we pass flotillas of green-winged teal, northern pintails, and mallard ducks, as well as the great blue herons who stake out their fishing territories along the shallow slough.
Every year huge flocks of white swans and snow geese visit the partially-flooded fields in the broad valley to fuel up for the continuing flights north. This time snow geese thresh in flocks back and forth overhead, creating quite a racket as they descend like a veritable snowstorm to blanket a nearby field. We don’t have a fancy camera to capture it, but this YouTube clip comes very close:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZNGyjnv9-4
Red-winged blackbirds also serenade us along the way, and bald eagles scout for afternoon snacks. Driving home along scenic Chuckanut Drive, looking out over the bay and San Juan Islands, we’re thankful to live among such a wealth of nature’s beauty. Even an afternoon shower can’t dampen our spirits today.
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