“An artist seen painting the Cherry Blossoms along the Tidal Basin,” Washington, D.C., by E. B. Thompson. The photo is undated, but was possibly taken in the 1920s. Via D. C. Public Library Commons on flickr.
The National Cherry Blossom Festival in Washington, D.C., will begin next week on Wednesday, March 20, and will continue through April 14. Click here for more information on events and local accomodations.
The National Park Service is predicting that peak bloom (70% of the flowers open) will occur March 26 – 30. The average date for peak bloom is April 4.
[ADDENDUM: The Capital Weather Gang blog at The Washington Post is departing from the NPS prediction. They believe that the peak bloom will come between April 3 and 7.]
Here’s another lovely hand-colored photograph of the Tidal Basin from about 1920.
The photographer is unknown; the image is via the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.
The cherry trees along Washington’s Tidal Basin were a gift from the Japanese government 101 years ago, so they would have been about 10 to 15 years old at the time of these photos.
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.— A. E. Housman, “Loveliest of trees, the cherry now“
enclos*ure 