“…it’s forty-below.” So says the Johnny Horton song (number 6–you can hear a sample and read lyrics).

When I get up in the morning it’s generally 40-above these days. It’s been a chilly spring, though, and things are just beginning to get green. On Tuesday, I spotted this (yes, on the way to the mailbox):

fairy-slipper.jpg

This is a Fairy Slipper or Calypso Orchid, (Calypso bulbosa). They grow more or less individually and are just 4-6 inches tall. Tiny little (often) solitary flowers doing their flowery thing in the vast moist, mossy woods. I’ve never seen the leaves of this flower; they die when the flower blooms. I do, however, know where a couple (and I mean two) of these plants are on our property, so will be looking for the leaves next year, hoping to spot a real live one in the wild. They bloom early around here–just the second flower species I’ve seen this year.

I get excited to see these flowers because there are so few of them, and they are so tiny and seemingly tenacious–delicate things surviving (thriving?) out in the Big Woods where 1000+ pound moose tromp around, munching helpless greenery. So I went on a several-acre fairy slipper hunt and found eight of the pretty pink flowers. I shot several.