Weekend flowers

took this last week while working from home. one of the things i like about my work is that it is totally ok to work a day from home. its even stimulated... whereas with labwork that wasnt possible of course, now all i need is a computer and an internet connection (more or less...). at first i was hesitant, but i am slowly getting into the habit of staying home on wednesdays. unfortunately, i dont win a lot of time with it, although each tuesday evening i hope i will. but come wednesday morning.... i really do NOT want to get out of bed as early as i have to when i need to catch the train... so... the won time in the morning is usually slept away, and in the evening its spent in the gym. the dishes? still there.... :)

ah, but i did find some time to take a picture of this plant on our table..... :)

Flower ladies

i just couldnt resist..... 

many of the tourists (especially the ladies) were almost diving into the tulips, and wanted to be photographed like you see above, surrounded by an ocean of tulips. somehow i didnt have this desire myself..... i also wouldnt know what to do with such a photo of myself.... :P

others had cameras on long sticks and were swirling around between the flowers, while taking pictures of themselves.... yep, at some point i was more fascinated by the people than the flowers.

Dutch tulips!!

ever since we are back in the netherlands, i have been wanting to go to the flower fields. as we hardly had any winter, and quite some warm days in march and april, the flowers are blooming a bit sooner than planned. to see flowers, you can of course visit the "keukenhof", the largest flower garden in the world. i guess thats something most dutch never did (at least i didnt). each year its only open for 8 weeks, and about 100.000 people visit it each week (!!). we are still dutch, so an entrance fee of 15 euros (about 21 dollars) is too much if you can just walk along a sea of flowers for free.....

here, we probably were the only dutch, and also the only ones that did not enter the flower beds. the sign was so cute, how could you disobey that?! there were so many fields, and just this one tiny sign at the start....

Dutch tulips!

i forgot to post yesterday. or rather... i waited and waited and then it was late and i just wanted to goto sleep. thats what often happens....

i bought the above tulips a week ago in utrecht, where i used to live before we moved to boston. there i always bought flowers at the same flower stand, and the past 4 or 5 (or more) years the price has not changed. nor have the people selling the flowers. except that the little boy (the son of the owner, i guess), grew quite a bit bigger by now (in both directions, up and sideways). i got 50 tulips for 5 euros (about 7 dollars!). i kept a bit more than half of it, and gave the remainder to my mom last week. look how pretty! and the grew quite a bit..... (never mind the mess on the table...)

i really missed buying flowers when we lived in the USA. but mostly they offered ugly colored bouquets for outrageous amounts of money, or just one pathetic rose. and mostly already blooming... so just for that its good to be back in the land where the flowers come from....

Free flowers!!

yesterday, there were free (!!) tulips available on the dam square in amsterdam. last year, while still in boston, i had seen the pictures on biebkriebels blog (here), so when i read this event was coming up again, i wanted to see it for myself! it marks the start of the tulip season; tulips are now available everywhere again, and it is a way for the florists to promote the tulip (and flowers in general). the girl with the orange jacket was with the organization of the event. her jacket says; "its time for tulips again!"

when we arrived, the event had been going on for 2 hours or so. i was a bit surprised and disappointed that the flower-pick-area was fenced off (but maybe without the fences it would be totally uncontrollable?), and i also didnt see the "artwork"; the tulips were placed in a pattern so that from above it looked like a particular painting. i think we were too late; many tulips had been plucked already! in total there were some 200,000 free to pick for anyone who was willing to stand in line a little. thats what we did; we both got a plastic bag and were free to pick as many tulips as we liked! we both filled our bags and that was more than enough (now at home we have 2 full vases, its so pretty!!), but some asked for a second bag or brought big bags themselves; i really wondered what those people were going to do with SO many flowers... they came with the bulbs still attached to them, so i am now in the process of drying the bulbs. then i have to wash them and get all the green and roots off and then they can be planted later this year (i had to look all that up, i had no clue!). so... i hope my mom wants some bulbs, as we dont have a garden. apparently, most tulips need to be taken out of the ground each year after flowering, dried, cleaned and kept till its time to plant them again...

Purple flowers

im a little lazy today, so here the flowers again, they opened!

i hope kay can identify them, because i actually dont know what kind of flowers these are... :)