The Quiet Picture

The forecast said that it would rain all day and some of it heavy, so I gave up the idea of dragging around the big camera. Instead, I manufactured a rainjacket for the G10, couldn’t go out without any camera at all…

We had good day out searching for flowers. I learned two new places for lady’s slippers, one of them quite different from my “regular” slipper spot so I think I’ll do my lady’s slipper photography there next year. The place was also home for some butterfly orchids, will take another week before they are in bloom so I’ve booked a visit there next weekend.

Another flower I have to photograph next weekend is the wild rosemary (Rhododendron tomentosum). The flowers we saw today were still mostly budding.

And there’s all those orchids in my favourite place that should be in full bloom – next week. Sounds like I’ll be busy, but it’s the kind of busy that I like!

You’d think that when you’re standing in a meadow dotted blue with forget-me-nots, it would be easy to find a subject. Nix. I was walking up and down the meadow, growing ever more desperate – it has got to be somewhere here, I just need to find it. And I did.

So that’s another flower I’ve never successfully photographed. But now I think I can walk past these blue beauties without feeling a sting of guilt for never taking my time to do it right.

While most people are busy complaining about the weather, I’m busy photographing. A little bit of rain, overcast, almost no wind, and cool – I couldn’t really ask for more, it’s as perfect as it gets for flower photography. The biggest problem is that the prime flower season hasn’t started yet… but it’s not like we don’t have any flowers, so no worries.

The first order of the day was to see how the bird’s eye primroses (Primula farinosa) were doing. We have the privilege of having the only known location for these pink primroses in Hälsingland, so although not a rare flower as such, it’s certainly very special up here. The flower is on the decline because of modern farming methods, ideally it needs grazing animals like cows to keep the grasses under control but of course these days hardly anyone lets their cows out “in the wild”. So for the lack of cows, somebody decided mow the grass and this seems to have helped – the flower was growing in large numbers, certainly plenty more than last year anyway. I didn’t have any good bird’s eye primrose pictures so I was able to remedy that, although I’m still not entirely happy.

Later in the day I visited the lady’s slippers again. I wanted to improve the “baby slipper” picture from Thursday, and I think this one works better.

You’d think that two days doesn’t make much difference, and in the case of the slippers maybe it doesn’t… but I was surprised to see fragrant orchid buds coming up seemingly everywhere. So when I settled down to photograph the slippers, not only did I have to watch out for the twayblade that are easy to see thanks to the leaves, but now the fragile fragrant orchids were also forcing me to come up with weird positions so I would do as little damage as possible. It’s not easy I can tell you… no matter how careful I was, I always found some poor plant squashed under my boot. There is so much going on in this location that I could go there every day and always find something new to photograph, but this fear of destroying the orchids will keep me out. Maybe in 1-2 weeks when the fragrant orchids are in bloom…

Not wanting to miss the lady’s slippers (Cypripedium calceolus) like two years ago, we checked out the status on Saturday. And were astonished to find out buds already! So they are in full bloom this week, which makes them record early (or actually, about as early as two years ago when I missed them…). Some years they’ll be blooming as late as midsummer, normally you’d perhaps find them at their peak a week before midsummer.

Tonight seemed like a perfect time to photograph them, it has been raining today and the wind has finally calmed down. So I  got on location and yes indeed many were in bloom already, but also many of them hadn’t gotten further than sprouting some leaves. I think this is the most amazing thing about lady’s slippers this year, there are so incredibly many of them. They were everywhere in this particular location, growing in greater numbers than before in the old spots, but also expanding their range by coming up in new spots.

And then there were the twayblade (Listera ovata). It’s very easy to recognise by its leaves already in this early stage and it was also everywhere – mostly growing on the paths that zigzag this location (the lady’s slippers draw a crowd every summer) so I unfortunately trampled a few before I realised what was going on and had a good look at the ground at every step.

The heath spotted orchids are growing tall, in a few days the first of those will open up.

Considering how generously the calypso orchid was blooming, and now all these other orchids coming up… The question that burns my mind is that is this location particularly strong this year, or have the conditions been such that orchids are early (and plentiful) everywhere in this region?

If you look at the average and high temperatures for May, 2009 was not much different from 2008. Except for one major thing – we didn’t get any snow this year! A hailstorm on the 27th but that was gone quickly.

I noted down some signs of spring last year so I’d better do it again for comparison.

• 1st: Dåasen lake free of ice (6th last year)
• 4th: mouse ears on birches (9th)
• 8th: blueberry flowers (9th)
• 18th: the big pile of snow behind the house is gone (10th)

Temperature (High): 25 °C
Temperature (Low): 6 °C
Temperature (Average): 12 °C

Barometer (High): 1032 mbar
Barometer (Low): 996 mbar
Barometer (Avg): 1013 mbar

Total of sunny days: 1

Snow: nix

Rain: 58 mm
Days with rain: 14

2007
2008
January 2009
February 2009
March 2009
April 2009

Angelina Jolie move over. My lower lip is a plastic surgeon’s dream right now, except for the cuts and bruises on both sides of it… The inside of the lip is looking particularly gross.

Since my chin was still oozing nasty this morning, I decided that it’s best I go to the ER and have them clean the deep cut that I failed with last night. Only problem was that by now the cut had dried shut and there’s no point to force it open, so I got a tetanus booster shot instead. Luckily they gave it to me to the left arm which was already stiff from yesterday’s crash, I still have reduced functionality in it. But it’ll go over. And scars heal. And ever my Tricker is looking just beautiful after my motorbike buddy not only fixed the fender but also gave it a 1st class wash and oiled the chain.

I had a chat with him to find out exactly how I crashed, it wasn’t quite clear to me yesterday. So my good luck started when I was thrown off the bike, I didn’t as much somersault as just simply fly forward head first. The bike on the hand did a full flip and ended up facing the opposite direction! So that’s another thing I was lucky with, that I flew to the left and the bike to the right so it didn’t come down on me. I remember lying there next to the bike and realised that the engine was still running and turned it off. And that I wasn’t in any pain, just shaken.

I know I’ll be telling this story over and over for anyone who’ll listen (even if they don’t want to hear it), because this is the only time I’ve crashed with anything. Maybe one day I’ll have another crash and break some bones or even worse and will be looking at this day with disdain… but until then, my fat lip earns me my bragging rights!