Canal Flower Market Morning

Striped market tents line a stone canal, their tables crowded with terracotta pots of tulips, daffodils, and hyacinths in red, purple, and yellow. In the foreground, a woman in a red skirt and yellow shawl carries a woven basket while choosing a bunch of tulips, her back to the water. Behind her, another shopper in blue haggles over a crate of vegetables at a stall stacked with garden tools. Small wooden boats drift along the canal beneath an old stone bridge, and stone buildings with flower boxes rise on both banks under a pale morning sky. Crates of daffodils and buckets of loose blooms crowd the cobblestones near watering cans and trowels. Every crate on the quay holds one color of bloom, keeping the whole street sorted before a single flower is sold.