{"id":13343,"date":"2020-06-05T07:20:42","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T11:20:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/psnp.info\/p4td_\/?p=13343"},"modified":"2020-06-05T08:04:59","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T12:04:59","slug":"an-abundance-of-lady-slippers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/psnp.info\/p4td_\/?p=13343","title":{"rendered":"An abundance of Lady Slippers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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You will want to view this as large as your device allows. \ud83d\ude42 There is a poem:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6\/5
I met a man out on one of my rambles
today who told me that if I just went
on out past the pond (where I seldom
go), and looked along on the left there,
down into the woods, I would find a
big patch of Lady Slipper Orchids.
\u201cHas to be a hundred of them,\u201d he said.
I took it as your typical Maine exaggeration,
but as I had nothing more pressing to
accomplish than checking on the
progress of early dragon and damselflies
around the pond, I thought, \u201cwhy not\u201d
and headed out there. It was further out
than I thought, but when I found the place
it was unmistakable. Not a hundred\u2026
more like five hundred, Lady Slippers,
maybe even a thousand (and that is no
Maine exaggeration), though they were hard
to count among the trees and scattered
over a long thin rectangle of open woods,
maybe three hundred by a hundred feet,
as the slope slopes off down to the
brook among the big trees. I have never
seen anything to match it, Lady Slipper
wise. Some of the clumps were a dozen
blossoms or more, and some of the plants
were eighteen inches tall\u2026big healthy
looking flowers, rich rose pink, delicately
veined, even in the half light of a cloudy
day under the canopy of tall maples, pines
and oaks. I took a lot of photos, of clumps
and individual blossoms, and of patches
were I could find a line of sight, but it was
impossible to capture even a little bit
of the impression of so may Lady Slippers,
so tall, so pink, all in such a small piece
of woods. Only on the way back did I
think of video. I could have maybe caught
it better with some pans and zooms over
a few moments as I moved about. Ah well.
The light was not great anyway. Gives me
a reason to go back out there the next
sunny day if we have one soon. I feel a bit
ashamed now of wining about not being
able to get into Rachel Carson for my Lady
Slipper fix\u2026who knew the creator had such
a splendor of Lady Slippers up that sleeve?
And I will be forever grateful to the unknown
man who took the time to tell me to keep
walking and keep looking left and down.<\/pre>\n\n\n\n
And I did go back for the video, which came out okay, though I am not sure it catches any more of the impression of all those Lady Slippers. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n