Hong Kong Flower Show I: Tulip

Last weekend, Grace accompanied her father back to Honk Kong and stayed over for the weekend.  She was just in time for the Hong Kong Flower Show, which was held in the Victoria Park.

I am showcasing here two photos of tulip that she took during the visit to the flower show.

Daily Flower 7: Poinsett (聖誕紅), tagged 6th Picture

We are new to this game.  Carol from Photophase tagged us to post my 6th photo from my 6th file.  I blindly choosed our 6th photo-file of 2009. The 6th picture in the file is a close-up shot of poinsett.  Not a bad choice for my Daily Flower also.

Visit Carol at http://photo-phase.blogspot.com/2009/02/tagging-day.html

Daily Flower 6: Apricot Blossom (杏花)

Apricot trees are cultivated throughout Southern China for thousands of years.  It has beens associted with ancient Chinese literatures and paintings.  Early February, or just after Chinese New Year is the Apricot blossom season.  

There is a small farm called Apricot Tree Forest (杏花林) at outskirt of Taipei cultivates over a thousad apricot trees.  We took a short ride to the farm on Saturday, February 7th.  The flower comes in two colors, pink and white.  Actually the plum flower, peach flower and apricot flower all look very similar.

Daily Flower 5: Rapeseed Flower (油菜花)

Taroko (太魯閣) National Park has the most dramatic scenery in Taiwan.  Its gorge, a small version of Grand Canyon, is world famous.  Liwu River (立霧溪) cuts through the mountain that is formed by pure marble to form the gorge.  It is part of Central Cross-island Highway, which cut accross the central mountainous region of Taiwan.  The highway is now not passable due to the earthquake of 1999.  On January 28, the third day of Chinese New Year, we reached the area from the north using Rt 7A from Yilan (宜蘭) through Lishan (梨山) and Dayuling (大禹嶺).  We have tried to go through this highway for six years and finally made it this time.

On the way to Lishan, we pass by this rapeseed flower field at Nanshan (南山), a tribal village up in the mountain.  By the time we reached Tiansian (天祥) at the Taroko Gorge, it was 5 o'clock in the afternoon.  We planned to be home in Taipei at 9 to have dinner.  We did not arrive till 1 AM due to the Chinese New Year traffic, both deep in the mountain and in the Snow Mountain Tunnel.

Daily Flower 4: Flowers from Chinese new Year

Narcissus (水仙)

My mother always had Narcissus at home for the Chinese New Year.  She put the bulbs in a plate with water and left them for flowering.  I bought some this year also and did the same.  They bloom very well and are very fragrant.  

Lily

We also have cut flowers such as lily to put in a vase.  They are usually white and this year I got the red ones.  They became full-bloom yesterday.

Daily Flower 3: Moutain Cherry Blossom

This is how a moutain cherry tree in full bloom looks like.  I took this picture during my trip to PinTai.  

This tree was by a moutain road with much less tourists.  There were much more flowers at the lower branch, which allowed me to come closer to the flowers.

This is a closed-up of what the flower looked like.

Daily Flower 2: Moutain Cherry Blossom

Sunday, January 25th, was Chinese New Year Eve.  We had most preparation done for the New Year Eve dinner and went out for a drive.  This time we went to Blue Mountain Trail, which I have described in my previous blog.  During that trip, we mainly photographed the moutain streams, but noticed that the road was lined with moutain cherry trees.  For this trip, although it was still early for the season, but a few trees already had flower buds.

Daily Flower 1: Moutain Cherry Blossom

We are into the holiday of Chinese New Year.  In Taiwan we have 9 days off from January 24th to February 1st.  It was gray and rainy on Saturday, the first day of the holiday.  We did some preparation for the New Year Eve meal then went out for a drive.  We went up to the host spring mountain area of Wulai.  It was about an hour drive up and an hour back from our home in Taipei.  It is famous for its waterfall and hot spring spa.  As the spring is coming, the cherry blossom season is about to start.  Taiwan's cherry blossom is very different from that of Washington, D.C. or in Japan.  The flowers are much smaller.  We called them Moutain Cherry Blossom.  But the weather was too bad this day for us to take any photos.  This photo was taken last year.