Azalea season

If there's one flower that represents Norfolk, it's the azalea. In the 1930s, the original founders of the Norfolk Botanical Garden surmised that the climate of the city was uniquely suited to growing here, and peppered the city with stands of the colorful fluted flowers. We have the old Azalea Festival complete with the Azalea Queen, Azalea Garden Road, and every year around mid-March, the whole city seems to burst into bloom.

To me, the coming of the azaleas will always be a sign that spring has sprung in earnest, no matter how cold or dreary the weather might be. They're not my all-time favorite flower (that honor goes to the camellias, who bloom their little hearts out right in the middle of winter) but I love the azaleas because they're a pretty little reminder to put aside whatever I'm working on and sink into the season.

The bank of azalea bushes at our house burst into bloom in earnest over the last week, and James, Anne and I have been hanging out in the front yard more than usual to bask in their gorgeousness. We've also been exercising our creativity and making azalea crowns and leis and clipping branches of flowers to bring indoors with us. A few days ago, while Anouk played, I took some quick portraits of her to put in her two-year book with the beautiful azaleas as a backdrop.






I've been uploading some of the pics of our azaleas -- and Anne -- to Instagram. If you've taken any of your own azalea photos, please share them -- you can tag them with #azaleaseason on IG or Twitter so we can all see them!

Have a great weekend, everybody! Hope it's a bloomy one.