Studying in the Dutch Countryside

"You should study outside sometimes," the family I live with told me a few weeks ago.  Since it is getting more and more beautiful every day here, I decided to take their advice to heart.  I've been eating lunch and doing some reading in the Leiden Botanical Gardens, and a couple weeks ago I packed some sandwiches and a very long religious treatise by a fourteenth-century mystic I'm studying and went for a bike ride.  The daffodils were just starting to bloom, and this picture is from the Leidsevaart, the canal running through the bulb fields between Haarlem and Leiden.

The bulb farmers cultivate the flowers in long rows.  There were mostly daffodils and late crocus when I went on my bike ride, but recently, I've noticed hyacinths and the very first of the tulips.

One of many different kinds of water birds that live by the canals in the bulb fields.

I had seen these stripes of purple in the distance from the train, but it was harder to get to them than I thought!  After wandering through the streets of a little village, I gave up, turned around, and then on the way back, I suddenly saw that if I rode under a bridge, I could get up close to these crocus.  Success!

I sat down on a bench in the sheep fields surrounding the village of Volgenezang ("Birds Song") to read my fourteenth-century treatise.  You couldn't ask for a more picturesque view.  There was a little group of deer grazing, and the Church of the Assumption loomed in the distance.

More sheep pastures.

It is very rare that you encounter a "hill"--if you even want to call it a hill--in the Netherlands.  The "hill" in this picture is actually part of the sand dunes protecting the Haarlem area from strong sea winds.  Closer to the coast, the dunes act as dikes, keeping the water out of the vast stretches of land that lie below sea level--"Netherlands" meaning "Low Lands."

The Dutch plant flowers everywhere in their cities.  These were thousands and thousands of these blue flowers growing along the sides of this road.

More of the same blue flowers from the Leiden Botanical Gardens.

Daffodils in the gardens.

And more daffodils by the temple in Zoetermeer.