“My favorite flour is tulips!” our granddaughter declared as we fastened our seat belts. Then this is your time of the year,” I responded. We have a few tulips blooming in our gardens, and there will be many more in the coming week. We live a little north of Western Washington’s largest tulip farms, where the bloom is about 50%. Another week or two in the tulip fields will bring them to their peak.

Tulips are big business in Skagit County. The tulip fields attracted 600,000 tourists last year. Tulip Festival organizers say the economic impact of people coming to see the tulip fields exceeds $80 million. Tulips are big business for small farms in Skagit County. It doesn’t take much acreage to produce blossoms for the cut flower market and bulbs for sale. The region is responsible for about 75% of all bulb sales in the United States. The largest tulip farm in the county is about 175 acres of flower fields. A much smaller, 10-acre farm is very successful and employs several families.

For a traditional tulip farmer, there are two harvests. Tulip stems are harvested and sold to flower shops worldwide in the spring. In the fall, the bulbs are put on sale for gardeners. But for RoozenGaarde, the largest producer in Skagit County, flowers are a year-round business. In addition to tulips, they produce bulbs for daffodils, lilies, hyacinths, and peonies. However, a key to their success is the acres of greenhouses in which they control temperatures to force tulips to bloom year-round, enabling them to sell stems through stores such as Costco, Safeway, and Fred Meyer.

The Roozen family farm is in its third generation. It was founded by William Roozen, who immigrated to the U.S. in the 1940s and brought the family trade with him. The family retains connections with flower gardeners in Holland. I have heard anecdotal reports of gardeners from our region purchasing tulip bulbs on trips to Holland only to discover that the bulbs they purchased were produced in Skagit County and exported.

I know nothing of the flower bulb and cut flower business. I don’t know if tariffs and a trade war will impact the industry this year. However, I know enough about world history to understand that a family emigrating from Holland to the United States in the 1940s was not an anomaly. With the rise of autocratic leadership in the United States, one wonders about the impact of out migration on our country in the next few years.

Politics aside, the tulip fields are worth a visit. So many tourists come to look at the fields that reservations are required to walk through the fields. Since it is Spring Break for our granddaughters, and they are spending some of their days with us, we plan to make the short trip this week. Both girls love to sketch and draw, and we’ll encourage them to take their sketch pads with them on the visit. I’ll be sure to take my camera. It is fun to photograph the flowers, and I’ll get to practice my macro photography skills. The opportunities to capture a few images of my granddaughters surrounded by tulips will be even more enjoyable. After all, they say that tulips are their favorite flowers.

I don’t know for sure what my favorite flowers are, but I have a particular liking for iris. Across the prairies of the Midwest, the iris often indicates the location of homesteads. There used to be a lot more people living on smaller farms. Over the years, however, more and more people moved out of the small farms and into the cities as larger farms and farming corporations took over and increased the scale of farming to match the price of farm equipment. A lot of houses were abandoned and eventually razed. However, if you drive rural back roads and walk through pastures, you will often find where houses once stood and families lived. The iris planted in their gardens sends out fresh blooms every year as a reminder of how life once was on the prairies.

I am also a big fan of roses. I’ve never been very good at raising roses. Years ago, when we bought our house, I attempted to prune a lovely yellow rose bush in our yard. I pruned too closely below the graft of the plant, resulting in a plant that produced miniature red tea roses. My father-in-law, however, was a careful cultivator of roses. The rose garden at the front of their house was a delight every summer and fall. He sought various colors and knew how to fertilize and prune the plants, and roses evoke special memories for me.

Since moving to the northwest, I’ve become a fan of dahlias. They are easy to grow here. Selecting and planting tubers is like planting potatoes; the plants grow easily. A little mulch and compost added yearly keeps the soil rich, producing beautiful blossoms that last for much of the summer.

One of my gardening successes this year has been rich purple hyacinths. Last year, I purchased the bulbs from a Skagit Valley tulip farm after being impressed with how the purple flowers contrasted with the tulips. Our hyacinths bloomed early, coinciding with the daffodils, and we still have a brilliant display in front of our porch.

The lilacs have leafed out in the last weeks but are a ways away from blossoming. When I had hay fever, lilacs weren’t my favorite plants. Their pungent aroma challenged my allergies. However, since completing desensitization, I don’t mind a few lilacs brought into the house to grace our dinner table.

I don’t know the answer to the question, “What’s your favorite flower?” Maybe, like my granddaughters, my favorite flower changes. I might choose hyacinths today and dahlias in July.

Unlike many other gardeners, however, I have a soft spot in my heart for dandelions. I dig them out of the lawn occasionally, but I love seeing the honeybees returning to the hives with dandelion pollen on their legs. The bright yellow pollen matches the color of the blossoms. Moreover, children can pick all the dandelions they want, which is not true of garden flowers. There have been days when an impromptu dandelion bouquet was my favorite flower.