‘Absolute joy’: Woman delighted to see cherry blossoms in B.C. after travelling from snowy Alberta

Adam Sawatsky meets a woman who left her home covered in snow to specifically see trees blanketed in cherry blossoms.

As she waits to meet her cousin, Joan Bailey invites us to look at her phone and see pictures of what she’s left back home in Alberta.

“It was absolutely glorious,” Joan smiles as she scrolls through photos of everything covered in deep snow. “The trees were amazing!”

But what a difference a week makes.

“Have a look!” Joan points down to the pictures on her phone before bursting into laughter and gesturing up to the trees that surround her now. “Trees that look like this!”

Trees that—instead of white snow—are blanked with pink blossoms.

“We came to see the cherry blossoms,” Judy Cook says. She brought her cousin Joan to this downtown Victoria street to specifically for the flowers.

“Look, there they are!,” Joan and Judy laugh together, before saying their goal is to take pictures of the petals.

Joan says she taken 500 photos so far. Judy laughs saying that’s an understatement.

“You have to find just the perfect one,” Joan smiles.

That perfect picture that captures both the beauty bursting from the branches and the feeling that seeing it inspires.

“It’s absolute joy,” Joan beams while pointing her phone’s camera up. “Absolute joy!”

The perfect cherry blossom pictures will also contrast with those winter pictures from last week, because Joan is planning to share the flower photos with her friends and family still surrounded by snow.

“They’ll say, ‘Lucky you!’” Joan laughs.

But she won’t be posting them to make others feel jealous. Joan’s goal will be to inspire positivity.

“You can’t focus on what’s going wrong. If you do, it makes you angry and cranky and I can’t live like that,” Joan smiles. “So I wake up in the morning looking for joy.”

And of you do that every morning, you’ll always find joy, Judy says, no matter the season.