This is the reason I wasn't around much today. Had to make a trip to Seattle to the airport and took a long detour to photograph the Mountain Lady's Slippers, Cypripedium montanum, in three different locations where they are just coming into bloom. Interestingly the darker forms were all blooming but the paler greenish forms have a ways to go, another week or so. Makes one wonder if the paler forms are not a natural hybrid of some kind, though there are no other slippers in the area that I know about. As is obvious from the picture, the weather was very mixed with rain and sunshine alternating and photography was a bit of challenge - keeping the raindrops off the lens, keeping the camera under a poncho when I wasn't taking pictures, crawling around on the wet ground (I came home filthy), but the raindrops do add a nice element to the pictures.