Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Thursday’s Thoughts #10.
Good morning everyone on this very sunny Thursday! Not a movement of air, it is just perfectly calm. But it is cool again this morning, wasn’t expecting that. The gulls have been here for breakfast and the chipmunks have also been busy. Slim has been here for a while too but with me out there he won’t chase the chipmunks. He’s learning a bit, not enough yet however. I haven’t seen Jasmine since yesterday morning, that’s not good. The chickadees were here this morning too so I quickly got some sunflower seeds to go out and feed them.
I’m not really feeding, but if I see them around I will go out and put seeds on my hand, and they will come down right away. Guess I wasn’t quick enough this morning however, they were gone by the time I got out there. I went for a walk to the river yesterday, first time in 9 days, that’s bad, I really need to go more often. I found some striped coralroot, one of our native wild orchids which I will be talking about next week. Unfortunately they were already finished blooming. They hadn’t even begun last time I was out there. I think the hot dry weather shortened their blooming time this year.
Too bad I missed them. There was a lot of them in that area too. Oh well, might have another chance yet. I’m heading out shortly to a new area for pictures, a couple places that used to have some hard to find wildflowers some years ago, so hopefully I will get something different this morning. But I need to keep this short today, however I will show a couple pics from yesterday’s walk for you to enjoy. Thanks for stopping by, have a great day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve And Muffin’s Wildflowers #40.
Hello everyone! Continuing with our look at wild orchids today, here we have the “large yellow lady’s slipper”, also called “greater yellow lady’s slipper”. This is another of our largest wild orchids that we have in this area and can be found right across most of Canada and most of the US, except California, Nevada, Florida and Louisiana. The flower stalk can be from 8 to 30 inches (20 to 75cm) tall and the flower itself up to 2 inches (5cm) long. Here it is shown still with drops of morning dew on it in an old photo that I have. Unfortunately I have not seen these in years now but they are commonly found along the river in certain areas where people traffic is less. Unfortunately, like all our lady’s slippers, people like to pick them and that stops them from blooming again and also then prevents them from distributing seeds to produce more plants to keep the population healthy. They bloom from May to July like the other lady’s slippers, is a native wildflower and will grow in shade and sun in moist woods, swamps and bogs, and even in ditches along roads and highways. I hope you have a wonderful day and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 