Cherry Blossom Festival; March 28, 2004

Every year Washington celebrates the Cherry Blossom Festival, timed to coincide with the blossoming of hundreds of cherry trees lining the rim of the Tidal Basin. The cherry trees were the gift of Japan from nearly a century ago. Predicting the blossoms of the cherry trees is a tricky thing. Depending on the weather, those blossoms could pop a couple weeks early or late. They don't stay on the trees that long either, maybe a couple weeks tops, until they drop. The weather in spring is pretty temperamental here, too. You could spend the whole festival in a monsoon. However, somehow it all turned out OK. I took my new camera out for a test spin and here are the results.