2023 Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival

After years of Covid closures, the Cherry Blossom Festival finally returned to Junjungno, the street that circles around the top end of Yeouido at the Korean government's legislative center.

Of course, the flowers return every year, but this is the first time the crowds of people have returned to view them since 2019! You can see there lots and lots of folks, possibly more than I expected on a Sunday morning before the Festival officially opened on Monday.


The pic above shows that the festival is not just about the cherries (a gift to Korea from the Japanese governemnt from around the same time as they gifted the ones found in Washington, DC's tidal basin to the US), but is actualy the "spring flower" festival, what with the 개나리 kenari, aka golden bell, a member of the forsythia family. Below, a gorgeous tulip in one of the roadside planters, followed by two little fellows posing for photo ops!

It's that time of year ...

Springtime! And election season!

Starting with election season.


School elections first.

March is also the time when flowers start to bloom here in The Big Big City, the earliest barbinger being the kenari, or golden bell, below the first blooms and then in full bloom:


But the cherry blossoms are probably everyone's favorites:



Next Wednesday is a major by-election, particularly for mayor of Seoul--the previous mayor, Park Won-soon, seoul's longest-serving mayor, committed suicide last July in a sexual harrassment scandal. The dozen or so mayor candidates are identified by number according to party, and use a few means of feet-on-the-ground canvassing:


Same intersection, different days:



You see, and mainly hear, a lot of these, too. Trucks with giant video screens and several volunteers singing and dancing while loudspeakers blare--at my intersection from 7 AM to 8 PM, non-stop:



Big, beautiful magnolia blossoms:


And, as April arrives, the azaleas are just beginning to show off:

The Post Where the Yeouido Flower Festival Should Be

Sadly, this year's Yeouido Cherry Blossom Festival was cancelled--not just the tents and shows and activities, access to the street was closed down. Frankly, every year looks pretty similar, as you can see by clicking on "cherry blossom festival" in the Label Cloud on the right, but it has been a highlight of springtime in Seoul for me since 2009.

So, instead, I'm going to post up a few pictures of flowers I see every day during my ten minute walk to and from school.

These are literally on the walkway once inside the school grounds.


The hillside that abuts the campus on the sidewalk is ablaze with azaleas:


Here's hoping that next year Seoulites will be able to visit the cherry blossoms around Yeouido, and that I will be among them, to share pictures with you then!

Spring 2020 is coming!

As the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted virtually every aspect of life here in Korea and around the world, my annual "first blossoms of spring" post serves this year particularly to remind us that, in the larger sense, life goes on. Korean public schools have been postponed for a total of five weeks so far, baseball and soccer seasons will have a late start, the Tokyo Olympics will be rescheduled, but the flowers are blooming on their regular schedule. Gotta love Nature!

As the first photo shows, with the Magnolia campbellii in the foreground, spring has even managed to spruce up my school frontage with a nice splash of color.


On the other corner of the main building at school is a purple variety:


But the first flowering harbinger of spring is always the "kenari", the Golden Bell, scientifically Forsythia koreana, which is the bush that lines both sides of Airport Highway along my walk to school.


Another of our first bloomers on the peninsula is the azalea, member of the rhododendron family:


My recently downloaded plant recognition app (PlantSnap), which is really really cool--take a picture, inside or outside the app, and it does a pretty good job telling what plant you're looking at--insists this is Prunus cerasus, or sour cherry, but I think it's the "Chinese apricot"--maehwa in Korean.


And finally, right next to the school, is this fabulous entry, that I think actually is sour cherry:


Caveat, I am not a botanist, I am just a middle aged guy who likes flowers. Regular visitors to my Seoul patch surely know this, but if you didn't click on "flowers" in the label cloud for 41 other posts that have lots of pics of, um, flowers. From Korea, and from my travels around Asia since I came here in 2008.

Seoul Botanic Garden

I saw this advert on the subway a few days ago, and noticing it was quite near me--four or five stops away on line 9 here in Gangseo-gu--I wondered why I had never heard of it before.

Now I know: it just opened. Today was a glorious day for hitting a botanic(al) garden, so hit it I did. I only went as far as the conservatory, but there is a huge expanse beyond that. I'll go back later this year, as quite a lot of it has hardly grown in. You approach through a mezzanine from the subway and explode into a wide vista unusual for the overgrown city of Seoul:



Some views approaching the conservatory:



The inside is pretty well organized by habitats, and has a cool overhead walkway.



There are several stall scattered around with some educational info about various topics, including coffee and poppies:



And, of course, the flowers:



Finally, a couple of shots from the gift shop, and a view across the lake as I made my way back to the subway. Bring your own water, as the prices are ridiculous--and now that the place is officially open, adult admission is 5,000 W.