Sunday, March 05, 2006

Blooms, Blossoms, and Dragons!



Day 5: This year's Philadelphia Flower Show is its 177th show.

For someone like me who grew up in Western Canada - a place not very old... in fact, the town in which I went to high school celebrated its 100th anniversary *after* I graduated from high school. What I am trying to say is, I'm amazed that something like this has been going on for such a long time. I also believe not only is it the oldest flower show in North America, but the biggest in the world. http://www.theflowershow.com/home/index.html


This will be a picture heavy post - and you can click on these pictures to see the photos more clearly. The theme of the flower show this year was a tribute to Mother Nature, so there were many fairies, animals, and curiously enough, table settings at many of the exhibits.
















Willow's new home. Trust me, she wasted no time in claiming it as hers. And this is a real house - meant for a child's playhouse. Andrew is only standing about 5 feet in front of it to give you an idea of scale.










This was a very cool exhibit - everything was in yellow which obviously made for a very bright scene. I loved the vases - as you can see, this one was filled with golden delicious apples. The arrangement behind and to the left had a vase full of lemons as its base.















Some goregeous rosy-coral rhododendrons. My father-in-law has over 140 azaleas and 100 rhododendrons in his yard and I find my appreciation for them gets deeper every year.











I took this picture for my Knitty SP6 because her handle is Turtlegirl76. This picture was part of an exhibit using the Beatrix Potter artwork and style as its inspiration.















And for Asami, here is the only Japanese woman I saw at the flower show. I'm just kidding - there were many Japanese tourists. If you will look closely, her lower half is just mesh and you can see through her.














And lastly, here is the dragon I promised you - made entirely out of plants down to his marigold eyes.

I really love going to the flower show - it gives you an early glimpse at all the tulips, daffodils, cherry blossoms, hyacinth, snowdrops, and other flowers that will soon be breaking free of winter's hold. After we were finished walking around the flower show, we had another treat - lunch in the Reading Station Market!



3 comments:

Mary said...

Nice to see pics of the Philly Flower Show. I live in Virginia so have only been once, about 10 years ago. I do remember that my feet HURT after walking around all those exhibits. They do have the best exhibits anywhere, though!

chris said...

Thank you for the virtual tour! That looks like such an incredible and beautiful show to see. I especially love the child-sized house...how fun for the children! It's amazing to see the creativity as well as all the beautiful floral varieties. Take care, Jo! :-)

turtlegirl76 said...

How fun is that! Beautiful pictures. I love taking pics of flowers. I saved that turtle pic to my hard drive, thank you!