Tulip

I suppose you could say this image represents hope. Hope that Springtime will come once more. A nice thing about Icelanders, or at least about the current leadership of the city of Reykjavik, is that making an often dreary landscape a little bit more pretty is a priority. And by dreary I mean city-in-the-winter dreary, a cold cement leafless drab that basically happens anywhere above the 40th parallel north. With that goal in mind, the City of Reykjavik has gone ahead and topped midtown lampposts with these very fantastic flowers, in yellow and red. In another part of the city, by Hlemmur, the flowers are not just buds, but are opened as if feeling the warmth of some distant sun. The blossom-topped posts rise high as a kind of offering to the gods for the return of the summer season, and definitely add a touch of magic to our very chilly city.