To Spring
From a distance, nothing has changed about the trees in Amsterdam in the last 4 months. They remain a skeletal shadow of their summery past.
Amsterdam: bare trees
Amsterdam: bare trees
Amsterdam: bare trees
However, if you stand under one, you’ll realize that spring has already begun working its magic.
Amsterdam: spring begins to work its magic on the trees
The wife pointed out that their reflections in the canals look quite psychedelic.
Amsterdam: trees and old houses reflected in a canal
Amsterdam: reflection of a tree in a canal
The Sunday a fortnight ago was your typical dreary, rainy Amsterdam day. We had been yearning to pick a couple of Van Gogh prints and couldn’t think of a better day to liven up our white walls. The Museum Shop at Museumplein was our obvious choice. On the way, we passed the Rijksmuseum. The trees in the museum’s courtyard — like the clichéd, in your face, early adopters of shiny things from Apple - had already embraced spring:
Amsterdam: spring comes early for some
The Museum Shop did not have Van Gogh’s Starry Night. The painting is now in the collection of New York Museum of Modern Art and so a shop in Van Gogh’s own country doesn’t sell the prints. I find it quite appalling that the print of a 19th century painting should be withheld by what seems like a museum cartel.
We settled for our second choice - Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms for the bedroom.
Van Gogh’s almond blossoms and our bedroom
And to make up for the disappointment, we got a print of Hendrick Avercamp’s Winter Landscape with Skaters. May be that’s what the Museum Shop intended — don’t give them the print they really want, and they’ll pick two.
On returning home, we found cries of birds echoing in our courtyard.
The temperatures here might still be below 10ºC, but spring doesn’t seem to care.