Tulip Festival 2008

I was finally able to go to the festival yesterday! (And had forgotten to load the newly charged battery into my camera before I left home.) Thankfully, my mother was with me, and allowed me to use her camera. My grandmother, and three of my children were also with us, and we had a wonderful time. The original dates for the festival have passed, but Mother Nature always has her own clock. There were still probably about half of the tulips which hadn't fully matured yet. I'd like to go back in a week or two, because I think it will be completely different.
I love blue and yellow together. It is so clean and fresh. The yellow tulips seem to glow in the sun. I believe that these are double daffodils. I found the touch of orange very pleasing with the blue hyacinth. I loved, also, the sprinkling of orange and blue pansies at the feet of the larger flowers. The gardeners here are masters, they know how to give each flower it's best opportunity to shine.

For Claude.

These flowers just said France to me? How about you?

Temple Square Gounds: Early Spring - Two

I'm hoping to get down to the Tulip Festival today, finally. Maybe we'll have the 2008 Festival for the rest of the week. In the meantime, here are more of the lovely flowers I saw at Temple Square last week.

The Capitol from Temple Square

Leafing out

The leaves are coming! The leaves are coming!

Handcrafted

The artisans involved in the construction of the Salt Lake Temple lent painstaking effort, creativity and tremendous skill to every detail. These are the door knobs on a set of the doors on the East side of the Temple. The detail is incredible to me.

My favorite canyon

This is Little Cottonwood Canyon in an early morning mist. It is my favorite canyon, and is beautiful at so many times of the year. I love this view, with clouds weaving in and out among the hills. In the summertime, when it it filled with color, the clouds are quite striking when they come low and close to the mountains like this.

A View from the Place

Standing near the monument and looking out over the valley is pretty amazing. There isn't much that you can't see from there. This is a view of the Oquirrh Mountains, the Valley's West range.

This is the Place.

When Brigham Young and his party first entered the Salt Lake Valley, he looked out over it and said "This is the Place." There is now at that location, a monument dedicated to those first pioneers, and a park where you can "go back in time" so to speak and see what it was life looked like for them.

Colorful Construction

There is a building under construction downtown which has tarps for now where the windows will soon be. It looked like a giant painting.

Temple Square Gounds: Early Spring

The trees on Temple Square are old and majestic. I just love how this one seemed to be watching over the flowers I was photographing.

Tulip Festival Seven: Complementary

I love the combination of blue and orange. These flower beds blew me away. I just couldn't stop taking photos. This, I think, is the best.

Tulip Festival Six: The Italian Garden

There is a fountain like this in Italy. It is a cascading basin fountain - in this case the basin being the size of a bath. One of the Italian Daily Photo Blogs posted a photo of the original not long ago, and I was very excited to see the it. Anyone who has a can help me figure out which blog it was - I'd love it. Like a goofball, I forgot to bookmark it and I can't find it anymore. For all intents and purposes, I have this one to enjoy. I'm not complaining. It's just nice to know where inspiration comes from.

Tulip Festival Five: Primary Colors

This is one of the brightest of my photos, in terms of color. One of the things I love about the Festival is how many different combinations and varieties of tulips there are. Most of the plants are listed by both common and scientific name so that you can replicate a garden if you'd like to. Obviously, there are many other kinds of flowers used in the gardens during the Tulip Festival, but the Tulip is Queen.

Tulip Festival Four

I really love floral photography. There isn't nearly enough time to post even a smidgeon of all one might see at the Tulip Festival, so I'm doing my best to so the "most" of the gardens. I'll throw in a few more close ups later on this week. This walkway was one of my favorite. It is soothing, and calm rather than bright and showy.

Tulip Festival Three - Mother knows best

I got some news today. It was cold here for a while, and the Tulips didn't quite show up for their opening day! Can you imagine? Mother Nature foiling the plans of human being? (It wouldn't be life if that didn't happen more than just occasionally.) They hope to have flowers blooming by the end of this week - and I suppose they'll have to extend the "Festival" for a little bit. Good thing I wasn't planning on going opening day - and that I had a family member who did go, and saved me the trip for this week anyway. It will be interesting to see if the flowers on Temple Square are in the same state when I am there on Wednesday. I had hoped to have a lot to show you from there as well. Mother knows best, that's what they say.

Tulip Festival Two

The Thanksgiving Point Gardens are 10 distinct gardens with gorgeous expanses of perfectly groomed lawn and paths separating them. I found a virtual tour online, which should help you to understand the scope of the gardens themselves. I'm going to post photos over the next two weeks in the order that I tool them. This week, I'll post photos from the 2007 Festival, and next week I'll post from the Festival happening now. I'll post photos in the order that they were taken. You can take many different routes through the gardens, but with many children at my side as I took these photos, I took the most common route. I hope it will give you a pretty good idea what it would be like to walk through the gardens yourself.

The Tulip Festival has officially begun!

. . .and that my friends is something worth celebrating. I've mentioned the Tulip Festival before, and I'll continue to add posts related to it during the next couple of weeks while it is running.
We have some really beautiful weather in the forecast, and I intend to make the most of it. Spring is finally, really truly here. Often, life's great beauties are revealed in high contrast - winter into spring is one of my favorite times, summer into fall also being one of those as well. The seasons, with their respective beauties remind us that change is a natural and constant part of life. They prompt us to appreciate what is here now, knowing that it won't last long - especially when you consider the life span of something like a tulip. Enjoy them while they last, because when they are gone, it will be a while before we can enjoy them again. (Except of course in photographs, which is why I intend to take quite a few.)

A Hopeful Sky

When I saw this sky I pulled over and snapped a photo. It seems to echo so much about life, at least to me it did. The sun was just too strong to be hidden behind the clouds, it came shining through despite the obvious obstacles. Sometimes, it takes a few clouds to help you to appreciate how beautiful that light really is.

Chapel Details: Four

This is the last of my old chapel photos, and I think it is my favorite. One of the reasons this building is unique is the roof. I haven't seen a multil-colored tile roof like this anywhere else in Utah.

Chapel Details: Three

Chapel Details: Two

This is a detail from over the door of the chapel across the street (to the west) from the Capitol. The door was actually quite lovely as well. Thinking back on it I wish I'd just taken the whole shot and cropped it when I got home - live and learn.

Chapel Details: One

This chapel is located across the street (to the west) from the Capitol Building. It is very unique in Utah.

Capitol Series : Four

This is a close up of the dome from the West side of the Capitol. I thought it was funny, Legally Blonde II was on TV yesterday, so I paid a little more attention than I normally would have - and sure enough, that's our building in that there movie. (Very colloquial english there, I'm not quite that country.) I have one more to add to this series, then I'll start the chapel across the street from the Capitol Building.

Capitol Series : Three

This is the front of the Capitol Building, from the West side. There is a church just across the street with some beautiful details that I'll show you starting Tuesday. Tomorrow, I have one more of the Capitol, which I think is my favorite. Happy Sunday!

Capitol Series : Two

This is the Capitol Building from behind with State Street visible to the left. When my mother was a girl, State Street was "the Highway." It was a continuous road stretching from city to city, leading to the Capitol Building in Salt Lake. It is still a main thoroughfare, however, it has been dwarfed by Interstate-15, and in some areas actually became I-15.
Have a great day!

Capitol Series : One

This is the Utah State Capitol Building from the East, near the hospitals I was mentioning earlier. It's design was chosen in a competition held in 1912 - You can find other history here. I quite like the small article, which includes a number of great photos, and this tidbit: In Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde the Utah State Capitol was used for exterior and interior shots of the U.S. Capitol. I didn't know that - can't say I've seen the movie, but still. That's cool.

Mt. Olympus - not in Greece

Tomorrow, I want to start on the Capitol, so I thought I'd throw in this shot of the last big Wasatch Peak today. This is Mt. Olympus, the northernmost of the three big mountains along the East side of the Salt Lake Valley.

My Blue Heaven

After a snow storm, the sky looks like this, stunningly blue with cotton candy clouds.

Steeple

I just thought this was a lovely sight.

Motion

Waterfalls have always been captivating to mankind. They are motion.
Today is our theme day - be sure to stop by some of the other daily photo blogs for more "water". . .

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