Published via Ecency

The Baguio Flower Festival 2023 is on! The opening day parade was held last February 1, 2023 and I had the chance to watch it.

Watch the video I made of what I managed to capture during the parade.

Panagbenga is a Kankana-ey term for the season of blooming. This month-long festival extends until March or depending on how the organizers wanted it to last. Because of the pandemic, this festival was halted. Last year, there were limited activities to celebrate the festival. This year, however, it is back in full swing, or at least more activities this time.

The short clip I shared here is one of the entries for the landscape competition.

Panagbenga not only celebrates the flowers that can be found in the Cordilleras but also the culture and tradition of the Cordillerans.

One of the main events every year is the landscape competition.

This is my entry to @dswigle's #MarketFriday. You can check out her latest post Market Friday goes to St. Kitts and find out all about the guidelines about Market Friday and hope to see you join as well. Have you been to St. Kitts?

Earlier today, I had some time for a quick visit to the park where this event was held. I took a jeepney, which is one of the three public transport here in the city (taxi and bus are the other two), going to the city.

Jeepney fare is now PHP12.00 for the first 4 kms and PHP1.00 additional for every km. From our jeepney terminal, I could have taken another jeepney ride to take me to the park but I decided to walk instead. It's not that far anyway, less than 2 kms I think. It's a great day for a walk.

There were two entries that I really liked and three or four that were okay. There's always that touch of Cordilleran to most of the entries every year.

These were arranged on one side of Melvin Jones where it is wide enough to hold this event. There were several places where this event was held during the previous years but for the recent ones, they were mostly held here.

There are two stages opposite each other centered on each side of the field. The stage closest to the park is where the exhibit was held, to the right and left of the stage.

The set of photos above was located to the left of the field. Those were the ones I checked first.

Igorot Treasure stood out for me. It shows a Cordilleran set up with a hut a wooden hut bedecked with details that is Cordillera. Rice are hung on one side of the hut and below it are animal bones (I'm not sure what part but it looks like jaws). There is also a wooden mortar and pestle that is used to pound rice to separate the hulls from the grains. Aside from animal skulls/bones, chicken feathers were also used, and a weapon of sorts was made from animal bones as well.

The Japanese-themed landscape entry tops it all for me. I can see and sense calm, simplicity and that's the kind of garden I would like to have.

Although there were Japanese-them over the years, this is one of the better entries that I saw. Maybe because of the play of light and shadow, the minimal colors used, like too little but a lot is actually going on yet I felt nice and good about it.

Plants are sold here as well and not just for display. I was interested with the purple chilis but not as interested to buy them just yet. Maybe later.

This landscape exhibition will run until March 5, 2023. I wonder who will win.

From there, I then headed to a nearby store to buy some stuff to try my card replacement. I was told by the bank that I can use my old card while waiting for my new one to be processed but unfortunately, both cards didn't work the last time I tried. Good thing it did now.