Posts tagged spring
Winners of the Weekly Worldwide Writing and Photography Contest—
Photo credit: Elizabeth
Weekly Worldwide Contest Winner—2/29/2012
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Writing 1st Place: David De BaccoEntry: Hollyhock House in Los Angeles, CA
- Photography 1st Place: elizabeth
Entry: Coney Island Beach and Boardwalk in Brooklyn, NY
Photography Honorable Mentions:Camilla Mann (Entry), elizabeth (Entry), P Y Huff (Entry), Liz Burnham (Entry),Joshua Phelps (Entry), Chelsea Johnson (Entry)Writing Honorable Mentions:Kristen Gustafson Hamlin (Entry), Rachel Webb (Entry), Katie Presley (Entry), Tanja Cilia (Entry), Keely Herrick (Entry), Elizabeth Bennett (Entry), Camilla Mann (Entry),Chuck Lenatti (Entry), Kristina Baines (Entry)
We are now excitedly judging last week’s Spring Gardens and Weekly Worldwide Contests, which ended today and will announce the winners next Wednesday. Loving all of the happy flower photos—thanks to all who submitted! Check out this week’s new Hiking Contest and Weekly Worldwide.
14 places where you can succumb to the fleeting power of flowers
Photographer: Fiordiligi0127 »>Go to Slideshow: Flower Travel
It takes a special kind of traveler to plan a trip around a phenomenon as capricious and fragile as seasonal flowers. As spring arrives in Japan, many foreign tourists will stay away this year, but—despite the recent series of terrible tragedies—Japanese meteorologists are still tracking the “cherry blossom front” as it slowly pushes north over the islands, waking the countryside from the slumber of winter.
The metaphor of a spring emerging from a cold winter and the ephemeral nature of beauty and life have always had a particular resonance for poets, artists, dreamers, spiritual sorts, nature lovers, and even politicians. Over the past century, the country of Japan has sent tens of thousands of flowering ambassadors around the world, creating gardens of cherry-blossom peace and beauty that bloom every spring in unlikely places like Newark, Toronto, Philadelphia, Macon, GA, and Istanbul. Even a town of serious workaholics like Washington, DC takes a brief pause to embrace the hanami spirit with plenty of suit-clad serious types lounging carefree for a few spring days in the shadow of the Jefferson memorial under the pink clouds of falling petals. It’s hard to imagine a more pure cultural impulse than sharing beauty—from one culture to another or the communal experience of crowds of people letting nature interrupt their daily routines.
Here are 14 places where flowers dominate the landscape, remind us of the endless cycles of nature, and command the attention of even the most distracted humans, at least for a short time. »Go to Slideshow
