Lady Luck

We are fortunate to live on a 77 acre parcel of land. It's not suitable for farming given the shallow, rocky soil and most of it is covered with cedars. Over the years we've carved out a 'domesticated' area which includes the lawns around the house, the flower beds, a couple of small ponds and a veggie garden. Outside this area lies 'the wilderness'. There's a fairly well-defined line between the domesticated and wilderness areas, and we are in constant battle to prevent the encroachment of the latter upon the former. I suspect that if we left nature to decide the outcome, within 2 years the wilderness would prevail everywhere.

One of the benefits of living in the country and having a wilderness area, is that I have an easy place to dispose of the numerous undesirable plants (aka weeds) that want to take up residence in the flower beds. I simply walk to the edge of the domesticated area and pitch a handful of weeds as far as I can - tough to do in the city, unless you consider your neighbour's property a wilderness area (and I'm sure you've seen a few of those).

About a week ago, I was doing just that - I weeded and pitched the weeds into the wilderness. As I turned to weed some more, I happened to notice a few yellow flowers some ways into the wilderness. At first I thought they were dandelions - then it dawned on me that there were no other dandelions around - their moment to shine had come and gone. Curious, I decided to walk over for a closer look - I recognized a flower I had never seen in the wild before - a small yellow Lady's Slipper ! Now I've pitched countless weeds into that general area over the years but I had never seen these before. At a later time, I trudged through several acres looking for more of them but I found none.

(all shots made with a 60mm lens at either f11 or f14, ISO200, and shutter speeds of 1/80 or 1/125 sec)

click on photos for a larger image

This is what I saw in the wilderness when I first spotted this seemingly nondescript plant.