Are you guys sick of seeing snapshots flowers and plants? I sure hope not, cause I’ve got a fresh serving of spring coming right up! Promise, promise, we’ll get back to our regularly scheduled health and wellness programming soon enough. But, to be quite frank, taking time to smell the flowers and enjoy this amazing city is certainly part of my wellness plan. How can I appreciate what I don’t slow down for?
Last Tuesday, in the midst of a seriously stressful work week, I decided to slow my roll and treat myself to a leisurely walk home from work down Michigan Avenue. Each spring, Chicago’s sidewalk gardens and medians explode with a symphony of bright and bold colors: tulips, peonies, daffodils, flowers that I don’t even know the name of! It is nothing short of magical. Magic well spent, if you’re a tax paying citizen such as yours truly.
This year, since it took forever for spring to show up, tulip season arrived nearly a full month and a half later than years prior. I was a kid doing the potty dance over this. Picture me on the bus every morning pressed against the window, on the lookout for some blooms. Along the same lines of Is There A Cubs Game Today, I should probably create a site for people like me (there are others like me, right?) to provide tulip blooming status updates. Cause let me tell you, on the day that I finally did spot one, you better bet there was a squeal received by a superflous of shady side eyes from fellow commuters. I cannot be the only person with this type of reaction.
Nothing short of a spectacular event, all over Chicago people come to see the blooms – to walk through Millennium Park, down State Street, and along Michigan Avenue. The city bustles and hums as it always does and in the middle of it all is a stunning display of nature and spring. Fountains and masterful gardening pop up overnight. It is without a doubt our city’s proclamation of a new season.
You can’t go a block without seeing someone hunched over snapping away on their camera phone. Sometimes it’s a tourist, but more often than not it’s a Chicagoan who just happens to embrace the hell out of tulip season like the rest of us. The tulips are more than just flowers, they are this city coming alive, the announcement that summer is on the way and so are warmer days. Nothing feels better than breathing all of that in.
P.S. This post title inspired by the incredibly awesome production and branding of this 90s Tulip puff paints video. You seriously need to watch this on your free time. And by that I mean stop doing your job and watch this video.
