purple prose

It’s midsummer’s day. No surprise, then, that it’s cold and overcast, with predictions of thunderstorms. If I think back across the year, then it feels like a very long year indeed, but the dunes by the mouth of the Don had a wonderful celebration in store.

First, I realised that there was an orchid in the dunes.

This looks like a marsh orchid, one of the Dactylorhiza, but the usual dune sp. is much redder. Even better, though, after I obsessively photographed one or two, it turned out that I was there at just the right time to see lots of them———there is always one week when they all come out.

And as a final treat, one of the orchids had decided to bloom right in the middle of a patch of Birdsfoot-trefoil Lotus corniculatus. Showy or what?