by cherry blossoms & snow
A new cultural event taking place right now in Vancouver is the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival, a celebration of the 36,000 cherry trees in the city’s parks, boulevards, and private gardens, more than in any other Canadian city. According to the short history of our trees, these have been planted over a period of sixty years.
Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?
How about the snow we’ve been having on and off since Wednesday? A strange mix of weather patterns has brought us windstorms, rainstorms, overnight freezing temperatures, sleet and snow, and sunny warm periods of melting snow, and repeats of that cycle! Snow is rather unusual out here on the West Coast in March except on the mountains. I love snow, especially when it comes down in thick fluffy flakes, but not in March! Our only other snowfall this winter was back in November, but it’s been a long cold wet winter. I’ve been longing for warm dry weather to get out in the garden. We’ll see how the cherry blossoms have fared through this snow when we go into town tomorrow.
March 10, 2006 in Culture, Current Events by Marja-Leena
No sign of cherry, or almond blossom here yet. I would love to see the Vancouver spectacle. Is there a Japanese presence there that influences the planting?
Yes, there is a strong Japanese presence here plus many gifts of trees from Japan – read about it in the link on the history (scroll down the page).
It looks like the movie version of Snow Falling on Cedars (I don’t know if you saw that – it was beautifully shot). We’ve hardly had any snow at all this year, so unlike last year. Strange weather patterns. I hope your weather clears up by the first of spring!
You are right, Leslee that image is like the one from that movie, I didn’t see that before! I still haven’t seen the movie but I read it about a year ago, and wrote about it too.