A pair of shoes

I've been rehearsing on my own for the concert on Sunday most of the day but in the late afternoon I had a walk with a friend in an area ten kilometres north of here  in a nature reserve where an abundance of special and rare plants grow. 

I'm glad to have finally seen my first orchid of this kind, called a "Guckusko" in Swedish, Cypripedium calceolus in latin. 'Gucku' in the Swedish name is an old dialect word for Cuckoo and 'sko' means shoe. The Cuckoos shoe. In English it's called Lady's slipper. The orchid is very rare and grows in one single place on Öland, I probably wouldn't have found it myself. Sadly there's only one plant left, an elderly couple we met there said there used to be quite a large group of them but this year there is only the one plant. The growth place is behind a fence and you're not allowed to walk inside the fence. Luckily this plant grew quite close so we got good pictures. It is an amazing place and we saw plants we don't usually see in the same place.