Saturday 16 March 2013

Drop everything you are doing (Cherry Blossoms are here)

 FLASH UPDATE: 2 days of sun!  Cherry blossoms are out!  Get your bike, get your feet, and go cherish!
This website lists quite a few of promising target streets in Vancouver. END UPDATE.

Two days ago I was driving down Nanaimo Street, when something seemed not to compute. Something about the trees just was not right.  After first realizing what it was, I had to double check:  there were small pink flower buds on some trees.  Cherry Blossoms!  These tiny things have managed again to announce that the days of the inhuman Vancouver winter weather are numbered (at least for this year).
Just a few more days!

Until two years ago I never realized why Japanese people go cookoo about these.  Until I cycled down a street with cherry trees in full bloom and stopped looking at the road and looked up instead and let the white-painted branches pass in front of a dark blue sky.  Try that!  Not necessarily on a bicycle, walking may work, but try it.  A life-changing experience ;-)   Others say that standing in a blizzard of white petals is a thing one should experience in one's lifetime.  This year, Vancouver will have to do for cherry blossoms, but at some point I hope to attend Cherry Blossom Festival in Hiroshima, which somehow seems to me a fitting place to experience it.

This panorama was pilfered from Wikipedia and yes, that domy structure just left of centre is the ONLY structure in that other picture we all wish we never had to see.

I hope to get some nice cherry blossom pictures in the following weeks, which will appear in following posts. The ones included here are from somewhere around Comox Street (I always get lost in the West End) from March 16th.
And I'm learning my lesson again. These buggers are fiendishly hard to photograph! Gotta learn quickly, cause they'll be gone soon.

2 out of 15?


The Empire-Cherry Blossom- Landmark














I stole the picture below from Idham Ssi's blog and I believe that is her in the picture. I believe she is from Indonesia and encountered these cherry blossoms in South Korea, but I am not sure of all that because I do not speak the language used in the blog.

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