Canadian Tulip Festival - 2017

My parents flew from BC to visit me this week, and I brought them to see the Canadian Tulip Festival a couple of times, as well as visited Montreal for two short days.  They are leaving tomorrow, but I think they had a good time overall.  Here are some of the pictures from the tulip festival.

Blossoms in Ottawa

In one week, I will be leaving Ottawa and driving to Colorado for my third (and probably final) field season.  To get my body in shape, I have been walking quite regularly in the last few days.  Plus it gives me a chance to enjoy the blossoms along the canal.

It's almost summer-like here in Ottawa.

Blossoms and a sad finding

Last week at the Arboretum, I made a mental note of when I think the crabapple trees will start flowering so that I can return and photograph the blossoms.

I went back today and the trees were just before peak-flowering.

Canadian Museum of History & Tulip Festival

Since living in Ottawa, one of the museums that I have not yet visited is the Canadian Museum of History.  This afternoon, I took advantage of the free Thursday admission and visited the museum for the first time.  It is very similar to the Museum of Anthropology (MOA) at UBC with a primary focus on the history and culture of Canada's First Nations.  Personally I thought the collection at MOA is more diverse and interesting.

Here are some of the things that caught my attention (most of them are associated with animals in some way).

One part of "Poo wiltso; Whaler's Dream" (silkscreen) by Ron Hamilton.

Canadian Tulip Pre-Festival (2016) & birds (and one squirrel) at FWG!

The popular Canadian Tulip Festival will begin in two days (here is one of my posts from two years ago).  To avoid the crowd, I went to Dow's Lake this afternoon to see if there are any tulips flowering beforehand.

And indeed there were!

May update

I am departing for Colorado tomorrow morning, so this will be the only post for the next couple of weeks until I arrive, get settled, start my field season, and maybe take a break to upload my photos and update this blog.

Until then, here are some of the photo I took the last few days.

On Friday (May 1st), I biked to school and saw this raccoon washing its paws in the ditch.  I stopped to take its photo, but it decided to wander back into the shrubs instead.

Canadian Tulip Festival - Blast of colours (Part 2)

I biked to Commissioners Park this afternoon to check out the tulip festival once again.  Along the way, I saw many (crabapple?) blossoms in the Arboretum.

Beautiful.

Tulip Festival in downtown Ottawa and Gatineau

Today, I went to downtown Ottawa and Gatineau to check out the Tulip Festival in these parts of the cities.

The blossoms are here!

Canadian Tulip Festival - Blast of colours!

One of the things I have been looking forward to since I moved to Ottawa is the Canadian Tulip Festival.  It is apparently the largest tulip festival in the world and symbolizes the friendship between Netherlands and Canada (especially since WWII).  Tulips are also Ottawa's official flower, so it makes sense for National Capital Commission (NCC) to put a lot of effort into this festival.  There are 30 flower beds at Commissioners Park, which consists of 60 different varieties of tulips and almost 300,000 plants in total!  For more information, please visit the main website - http://tulipfestival.ca/site/home/en.

One of the main information boards about the establishment of the festival.

Visiting UBC Botanical Garden with friend

Yesterday morning, I got myself a pair of free tickets to UBC Botanical Garden (thanks to Tourism Vancouver) and invited my friend from Taiwan to visit this attraction located in the campus. I can't remember when was the last time I visited this place, but since I couldn't recall ever posting about it on this blog, I imagine it was more than three years ago when I was still an undergraduate.

While waiting for my friend to arrive, I wandered around the bus stop and photographed the flowers and critters that I could find, such as this tiny snail which was found on the road and I transported it safely to this leaf instead.

Orange-crowned (or Yellow?) Warbler spotting

This morning, my mother called me to the bathroom to check out this spider, as well as to move it outside.

After dropping it in a plant pot, it stayed still for a few moments for me to snap some photos.

Bees, Tulips, Eagles, Flycatcher(!) and Blossom

It is such a nice day today. Perfect day to go bike-riding.

Look at the view! Only a few clouds in the horizon.