Orchids in Their Glory

Kind of chilly and damp today.  A good day to check out the bog where hundreds of Grass Pink orchids grow, now that friends have been reporting them from other sites.  I won't say exactly where this bog is, since I have to cross private property without permission to get to it.  But aside from making me feel a bit sneaky while trespassing, it's the easiest bog I've ever accessed or walked on.   You just slip through  a hedge, and there before you lie orchids as far as the eye can see.

I just couldn't stop taking photos.

I'd hoped to find at least some budding stalks of another orchid, the White Fringed Orchis, that also blooms profusely in this same bog.  Not a trace of them yet.  But then I remembered I'd found them before when the Highbush Blueberries were ripe enough to fall into my hands at a touch.  The blueberries today were a long way from being that ripe.  Oh, how I love the colors of unripe blueberries, those pale aqua spheres topped with rose and lime ruffles.

There were Lowbush Blueberries and Black Huckleberries, too, with only a few ripe fruits here and there.  While hunting for at least a small handful, I noticed these odd little velvety puffs on many of the leaves. (I can't recall now if the growths occurred on the blueberry or huckleberry shrubs or both.)

I've seen blueberry stem galls before that look like red berries, but these growths were only on the leaves, and rather than being solid hard berry-like galls, they were hollow underneath, as I could see when I turned the leaf over.

How odd!  Almost all the low berry shrubs were affected.  I hope it doesn't affect the quality of the fruit, which I hope to enjoy when I return in two weeks or so to find those White Fringed Orchids.