Steve`s Country
For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
Fantastical Friday #10.
Good morning on this very beautiful and fantastical Friday! The sun is shining, the sky is clear, mostly anyway. There is smoke in the air again, but it’s not too bad today, though it may get worse throughout the day. There are now 74 forest fires burning in this part of Ontario, 12 are listed as under control. It is still incredibly dry in this part of our province, just as it is throughout western Canada right now. My friend and I drove out to a small lake along the highway yesterday morning to get some different pictures.
On the way out we passed an area where a forest fire had burned through back in May. That fire burned about 7,000 acres of beautiful forest. I will share one of those pictures today. That was part of the same area where a much larger forest fire burned back in May of 1980, when more than 200,000 acres were burned. Back to our destination of our trip. I was hoping to find some more orchids to share but was unable to locate any.
But I might have been too early for the ones I was looking to find. But I did find other wildflowers and I will be sharing their pics in the coming days. I also was able to get other pictures too, such as the lake here. It is a beautiful small lake full of rainbow trout. This is a very nice picnic spot and can get quite busy here in the summer. The water is very clear, as you can see by the top featured image. There are lots of picnic tables to use as well. Just a great spot to go and spend a little time relaxing.
I did find a pink lady’s slipper plant, but it had finished blooming and had a nice large seed pod, so hopefully it will be able to spread those seeds around for more of these beautiful orchids to grow in that area. I was also able to get pics of a couple damselflies, one is definitely different than ones I already have, not quite sure about the other one yet. Both of these were up among the pines away from the lake. I thought that was a bit odd, usually they like to stay closer to water, or at least wet areas. There are many of these small lakes along our highways up here. Well, I hope you all have a wonderful day and weekend and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
Steve And Muffin’s Wildflowers #41.
Hi everyone, Happy Friday! Today we have the third in our group of large orchids, this time the “Showy Lady’s Slipper”. This is a very beautiful wild orchid that grows from 10 to 27 inches (25 to 67.5cm) tall. The flower itself is about 2 inches (5cm) long. The pink color can vary from light to dark and some flowers are pure white. This is also an old picture that I had since they seem to be totally gone from our area now. They will grow in shade or full sun and bloom from June to July. They seem to prefer more open habitat than the other lady’s slippers as long as there is abundant moisture. They will grow in moist fields, woodland openings, even in ditches along roads and highways. But they will also grow in heavily shaded areas of moist woods and bogs. In Canada these can be found from Saskatchewan to the east coast and in the US from Minnesota to Arkansas and across to the east coast. We’ll be back next week with more wildflowers to share, have a great weekend everyone and God bless!
Steve and Muffin.
©2021 Steve McLeod.
