This year the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival has again shifted nimbly during the pandemic to provide marvellous virtual offerings of dances, haiku, and virtual walks during their annual great springtime event.
Originally planted in Stanley Park as a gift from Japan after World War One, cherry trees do remarkable well in the Vancouver microclimate. In the 1960’s the use of smaller scale trees was popular in the city. That included flowering crab apple and plum trees to augment existing and new cherry trees which provide a visual spectacle every March and April.
I have written before about the cherry blossom festival and also about the unnamed street in East Vancouver that gets inundated each year by dinosaurs, costumed admirers, weddings and others for the chance to get photographed under that street’s ceiling of blossoms.
This year here are some images from a westside walk in the Quesnel neighbourhood. The backlanes here are windy and hard to navigate through. And in those backlanes a few surprises. Look at the image below.
These lanes also have some of the most interesting new laneway houses which (perhaps not surprisingly) emulate the accompanying mansions. This one has southern sun, and a northern mountain view.
But no cherry trees in those bendy backlanes. Coming out of those backlanes on Quesnel and Narvaez there is this:
Truth that a Vancouver Spring has arrived. You can take a look at the Vancouver Cherry Blossom festival offerings here.
