the elusive Lady's Slipper

Deep in the woods, Prince Edward Island's provincial flower, the Lady's Slipper, blooms at the same time as our other iconic flower - lupins.  While the tall, spiky lupins can be seen in ditches from the comfort of your car when out for a drive in the countryside, Lady's Slipper is quite another story.

This wild orchid is present in only a few places in the shady woods, at a time of year when the mosquitos are at their absolute most ferocious. Even after spraying myself liberally with deet, I could barely stay still long enough to kneel down in the spongy green moss and focus my camera before feeling the tiny biters go right through the shirt on my back.  So these photos are hard won, but worth it!

is anything more graceful and lovely?

pale ghosts that need a few more days to become pink

A few other pretty flowers were also showing off:  this is bunchberry.  After the flowers fade, they are replaced with bunches of bright red berries.

blueberry blossoms are like tiny bells

I don't know the name of this one, but the three small balls of flowers are shaded by the taller leafy canopy above them.

This tiny star of a flower made a perfect shadow of itself on the leaf below.  I should have spent more time fiddling with the camera to get a better detail in the flower, but the mosquitos had moved in for the kill.