Cherry Blossom Viewing Tour Day 2

Sunday was a gloomy gray day but the cherry blossoms
were brightening up the city!
Stay tuned for more Sakura reports this week!

If you know the
best blossom viewing spots, please let us know!

False Creek, by Granville Island.  Full bloom!

By the Vancouver Maritime Museum... Full Bloom!

Queen Elizabeth Park ... will be the BEST viewing spot NEXT WEEK!  

Not quite there yet...

Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighborhood... rows of cherry trees!  

Cherry Blossom Tour in Vancouver Part 1

Happy spring, everyone!

We are so lucky to be living in beautiful Vancouver where spring time means blooming flowers and irresistible fragrance in the air...

Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival kick started last week and if you walk or drive around the city, you can easily spot the light pink cherry trees.

For those of you who are not familiar with the Japanese obsession with Cherry Blossoms (known as Sakura), it is a national celebration that the entire country anticipates every early spring.  Sakura is one of Japan's national flowers and Sakura viewing (known as Hanami) events are super popular!  Hanami is where people sit under the full bloom of Sakura trees for hours and admire the beauty of the blossoms while enjoying food and drink specially prepared for the Sakura viewing.

As someone born and raised in Japan, this is the season to celebrate.  So I've decided to team up with my husband and go on a journey to find the best Sakura viewing spots with the help of Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival Society's website (www.vcbf.ca).

Today, I started off with one of my favorite spots, Burrard SkyTrain Station!  You just can't miss this beautiful tunnel of cherry blossoms.  Walk around and feel the soft and fragrant air created by the millions of sweet Sakura blossoms...

Fall has arrived

Now at the shop, it's all about beautiful fall colors, fall plants and pumpkins.  One of our favorites at Queensberry is Physalis also known as Chinese lantern or Cape Gooseberry.  You can dry them and keep them for a long time and they are a great addition to fall-themed bouquets or arrangements.

Whenever I see Physalis, I feel warm and fuzzy because my mother used to tell me that inside the orange lantern lives a fairly and that individual lanterns are little houses for fairies and I should never break them.  Later on I found out that there is actually a little fruit inside the lanterns, but I still like to imagine a little fairy dancing inside them. 

Another favorite at Queensberry are mini pumpkins.  You will see a pile of mini pumpkins all through autumn at our shop, and we're so excited to have these in our arrangements!  

... and don't forget our little glittery pumpkin picks!

  

Little Miss Craspedia

I just had to share this picture of Craspedia.  All our staff went "Awww" and we have been frequently witnessing the impulsive purchases of Craspedia for the past few weeks.

Craspedia is from the Daisy family, and are commonly known as billy buttons or woollyheads (cute!).  Their fuzzy flowers (?) last for weeks and are just so darn cute in a bouquet.  We like to stick two Craspedia in our Berry bouquets like antennas...  That's just one example of what you can do with Craspedia.

Just a quick announcement...

We can now deliver flowers across the Greater Vancouver area!   Give us a call or send us an email.  We will be happy to assist you with choosing the right flowers for your special occasion.   Minimum order for our delivery service is $25.

Also, we now carry gift certificates (available in any denomination).  If you are not sure which flowers to choose, treat the recipient with a happy shopping experience at our flower-filled shop!

Cotton Candy Hydrangea

These cotton candy - no, hydrangeas arrived at Queensberry on Tuesday and became instantly popular with our customers. They are as big as my head (!) and have a lovely name, "Limelight". Unlike some of the hydrangeas, these limelight hydrangeas are strong and vibrant. It is beautiful by itself, or as a part of the arrangements. I later found out that Limelights are the award winning hydrangeas! (winner of the 2008 Royal Horticulture Society Award of Garden Merit, and the PHS Gold Medal Award etc.).

But at Queensberry, they will be fondly remembered as that-huge-cotton-candy hydrangea!

Hydrangeas Everywhere!

Today was such a nice day for a bike ride, so I got on my bike and biked around my old hood, The West End. And I just happened to bike by this gorgeous hydrangea shrub. Look at the gradation of the color!! The beautiful shades of purple and pink! This is perfection. I stood there for a while and dreamed about what a beautiful bouquet I could make with these hydrangeas. I could pull a "cut and run" perhaps, but it's not my nature to do such thing, and plus, these hydrangeas were full of energy and life... they were soaking up the sun, breathing the fresh summer air, and were just happy to be there, I could tell.

When I was a child living in a suburb of Tokyo, I often stopped at a big shrub of hydrangeas on my way back from elementary school and collected poor little snails that were often found on the leaves. Hydrangeas, just like its name suggests, like water very much, and they signify the arrival of the rainy season in Japan. We believed that hydrangeas changed their color gradually from the beginning to end, but later I found out that it's actually the level of aluminum in the soil that controls the color of hydrangeas. So if they are transplanted, they change their color to match the soil's condition. Whenever I look at hydrangeas, they remind me of my childhood in warm and rainy Tokyo ...

They can be seen everywhere right now, so enjoy their beautiful blossoms while you can.