The Cherry Blossoms are coming! The Cherry Blossoms are coming!
According to Robert DeFeo, the chief horticulturist for the National Park Service, the cherry blossoms will be at their best from March 27 to April 3.
The Washington Post reports:
The annual Cherry Blossom Festival runs from March 29 to April 13. In addition to the festival's highlights -- the kite festival on the Mall, fireworks over the Southwest Waterfront, a parade along Constitution Avenue on the final weekend -- there are some interesting new initiatives this year. In an attempt to alleviate the congestion around the Tidal Basin, the Park Service is partnering with Tourmobile to offer satellite parking at Hains Point. Visitors will be able to park at a number of free lots on the peninsula and take free shuttle buses up to the Jefferson Memorial. (Click for a (PDF) map.) This service will be in operation every day between 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.My favorite part of the Cherry Blossoms season is riding my bike around Hains Point under a blanket of pink pedals. It's really quite amazing. My least favorite thing is playing dodgems with all the tourists who go down to basin and don't look both ways....
A brief history of the Cherry Blossom festival:
The National Cherry Blossom Festival annually commemorates the 1912 gift to the city of Washington of 3,000 cherry trees from Mayor Yukio Ozaki of Tokyo to enhance the growing friendship between the United States and Japan....
Three thousand eight hundred more trees were accepted in 1965 by First Lady Lady Bird Johnson. In 1981 the cycle of giving came full circle. Japanese horticulturalists came to take cuttings from our trees to replace Yoshino cherry trees in Japan which had been destroyed in a flood. With this return gift, the trees again fulfilled their roles as a symbol and agent of friendship. The most recent event in this cycle occurred in the fall of 1999. It involved the formal planting in the Tidal Basin of a new generation of cuttings from a famous Japanese cherry tree in Gifu province reputed to be over 1500 years old.
1 comment:
Can't wait for cherry blossoms too! If ever you get DC-fatigue, those are the cure. Everything seems possible in the spring, under a pink snow of petals.
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