Tulip Festivals, and Other Things on My Powder Room Walls.

It was with great sadness that we accepted the fact that we are not allowed to travel north to the Skagit Valley for the Tulip Festival this year, but we have good memories and mementos of past festivals. 

Each day on Face Book I have been posting photos of the display gardens and growing fields at RoozenGaarde that I took in 2018. That was a time perfect for photography, with a white sky and growing fields right behind the display gardens. Since they rotate the fields every year, that is not always the case. My header photo is one that I took that day. 

Each year there is an official poster painted by a local artist. This is the poster for 2020.

Most of us will only see it on line this year. Other years I have always looked for copies of the official poster and have collected some as card size over the years. Most are framed with something I found in an old box of frames that we had. I few of the newer cards got purchased frames. They are all hung on our powder room wall, which is also our mud room, garden clothes room, and all around gardening themed space.

 Looks like I need to do some straightening again. There are also some gardening theme ornaments, some seed packs from Colorado that Jill gave me when she lived there, and some old chalk ware I picked up at yard sales. 

 These are special cards I found yeas ago. 

 Close ups of some of the previous Tulip Festival posters. 

 Last year I switched from collecting cards to collecting magnets. I was out of space. This is 2019.

These are travel treasures: a little felted picture from a gift shop near a Stave church in Norway, a plaque from Santorini, dried edelweiss from Austria. 

Another find in a gift shop.

 A book plate I bought from a street vendor in Amsterdam and framed. I loved it because to me it looked like a grandmother sharing her garden with a grandchild, something I did often with my young grands. 

 I always have some kind of pottery and floral arrangement in this corner. Dried hydrangeas still fill the bill until I get more flowers in the garden that I want to pick. I took away the Easter eggs but left the chicks and ducks. 

On the back wall is a hanging of a fabric panel I framed and quilted, and more of my pottery collection. 

And not in my bathroom, but on my kitchen counter where I can smell them often, a bouquet of lilacs Jill sent with Isaac yesterday. He came over to get some seeds for a science project.  

Flowers are everywhere here now. I have a tulip fest in my own back yard. Life is good, even if it's not great.