A reminder of warmer Prairie months before the winter snow changes the landscape.

As we dig out our heavy wool coats and watch the last gold leaves drop across Winnipeg, it’s easy to get fully wrapped up in fall. But scrolling through our photos from earlier this year, we hit a hard stop on a shot we totally forgot to post—and there was no way we could let it sit in camera roll limbo until next June.

Check out this lupine from earlier in the summer.

When you get up close to one of these flowers, it almost feels like looking at something engineered in a lab rather than grown in Manitoba soil. The way the velvet-like buds stack up in a perfect, repeating spiral looks like a tiny futuristic sculpture. The soft, fuzzy edges on the buds catch the light, framing those deep magenta and soft cream tips against a background of starburst-shaped green leaves that look like solar panels.

We spend so much time in the warmer months walking around Manitoba’s trails, riverbanks, and green spaces, taking in the big views. But zooming in on the small stuff reminds you of just how much detail gets packed into a Prairie summer. It’s a completely different kind of beauty than the sweeping red canopies of autumn, but just as striking.

With winter knocking on the door in Winnipeg, having a little piece of summer tucked into our day is a nice reminder of what’s waiting for us on the other side of the snow.