Yesterday morning Blue & Max told me they were taking my nephews, David & Theo and niece, Ruby, to the Skagit Valley to tiptoe through the tulips.
I asked Blue & Max to please take me a picture of the trio tiptoeing through the tulips, but the above is all I got. Nary a tulip in view.
For those unfamiliar with such things, those mounds in the background are known as foothills, not mountains. These are foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range. Over time the Skagit River carved a valley through the Cascade Mountains, eventually leaving the mountains to create an enormous alluvial plain, rendered extremely fertile due to the eons of being flooded, prior to mostly being tamed by the intervention of man.
The alluvial flood plain part of the Skagit Valley is known, locally, as the Skagit Flats. Looking at the photo you likely can guess why this is called The Flats.
The Skagit Flats is where most of the Skagit agriculture takes place. I do know of a big Cascadian Farms strawberry field up the valley, well out of The Flats zone.
Actually I don't know if the big Cascadian Farms strawberry field still exists, upriver. It has been a lot of years, as in 14, since I have driven past that strawberry field on my way over the North Cascades to Eastern Washington.
Over 90 different crops are grown in the Skagit Valley. In addition to the aforementioned strawberries, you will also find fields of corn, peas, raspberries, blueberries, cucumber, potatoes, broccoli, apples and tulip, daffodil and iris bulbs.
The Skagit Valley produces more flower bulbs than any other county in America.
All that flower bulb production makes the Skagit Flats very colorful this Skagit Tulip Festival time of the year. So, I really don't know why Blue & Max could only find a field of mud, with no tulips, for the kids to play in.
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