Togetherness

In Melbourne with Adrian, Maria is in Wellington with Tim and M&S are in Pordenone with Ele and family. Great to think of the connectedness across 3 continents!We have had a lovely day - determined to get out of Melbourne CBD, Google search led us to the Tesselaar Tulip festival. Took us 2 hours by public transport - so we did feel we were well out of the urban!!

Worth the trip - so much more than the Wgtn Botanic gardens last weekend.

We learnt many facts about tulips:

They came from Turkey originally

In Turkey the word for tulip translates into Lily

There are over 6000 tulip varieties

In Holland, at the height of Tulipomania it was cheaper to get a renowned artist to paint you a picture of a tulip than to buy a bulb

The striped tulips that I particularly liked were originally the result of weevils in tulip bulbs

The first tulip festivals happened in Turkey and turtles with candles on their backs walked through the tulips at night to light up the blooms

One we are not certain about that was stated as a fact was that tulips are the flower that has had the most influence - political, cultural, social, economic etc, etc.

Struggling to add more than one image in this new formats - driving us crazy this am!