I met my good friend Pam for lunch today at the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary. It’s one of our favorite meeting spots because it’s green and lush and right in our back yards.
For the second year in a row, our spring visit coincided with the arrival of the Showy Lady’s Slipper, Minnesota’s state flower.
They’re a rare sight, since they appear for only one or two weeks each year (much like Minnesota’s summers). So we were pretty giddy about spotting a huge clump of them today.
Pam was very patient as I attempted to photograph them from every conceivable angle. She was also very generous as I went on to consume most of her oatmeal cookies and an apple. Good friends are like that: patient and generous.
Thanks for a wonderful walk, Pam. I’m looking forward to our next adventure in the woods!
HeideBlog 
Can’t believe we saw pink ladyslippers the second week in June! Everything is late this year; the spring has been very cold and dry. H has a wonderful eye for slightly hidden things in the woods, like ladyslippers and bluebirds; if not for her I’d have trotted merrily along yakking away without seeing them. An excellent fellow hiker for all seasons!
It takes an excellent fellow hiker to know one! Thanks so much for your comments, Pam. It’s nice to have such a supportive reader.
Hey, after our hike yesterday I was thinking it might be kind of fun to log our observations each year. We already have two years’ data on lady slippers. I feel a chart coming on!