Scroll Down For Orchid Painting Videos

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Babies doing well....

My second attempt at growing from "flask" is going well. I have about 20 little dendrobia and they have been in a compot for about a week. I moved several of the larger ones into individual pots and placed one on a twig to start it towards growing on a slab, which was recommended for this species. I have that one enclosed in a clear plastic juice bottle. It looks happy, so far.

I moved a couple of my larger dendrobia into a hanging basket so that their pots will be ready to receive these babies as they grow. The basket is pretty big and I am pretty sure these two are the same variety, (although I lost the label,) so I put them in together. They are not quite blooming size. One appears to be preparing to spike, but it might be just new leaves.

My "3 tiered wire basket" collapsed from the weight of the other orchids. Fortunately, nothing broke and so now I have the lighter basket on that hook. It pretty much fils the window.
Posted by at No comments:
Labels: , , ,

Saturday, June 14, 2008

June Already!

Well, here I am again.... Just finished reworking my windowsill garden of orchids, getting rid of most non-orchid plants. I now have one window-box of terrestrial orchids, some purple "ground orchids" that bloom in clusters of small blossoms, the yellow Oncidium with has just ended, a purple Phal. The pale green phal is in its third blooming, with one delicate bloom far out on the end of a graceful spike and it looks like it is making another bud!

My vanilla is the only one not doing well. It almost looks dead. I actually discarded it into the terrestrial pot but then noticed that the stem seems alive and has one weak root, so I will leave it there to see if it does better. I did have it in a mix of bark & spharnum, but I think it wants some soil.

I've placed a three-tiered wire basket in the middle of the window with some non-blooming babies and some nice white organdy panels to cut the sun. The other orchids are arranged on a water tray on the half of the sill that is not covered by the windowbox. The trees outside have filled in their leaves and so I keep the panels up most of the time, now.

I found some of the right kind of pine trees for getting fresh bark flakes and I am just coming to the end of rain-water supplies, so I hope we get some more rain soon.
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)

Fine Texas Rain

Going With The Flow

Drawing On Air

Book Review: Orchid Thief

The Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean
1998 Random House 282 pages

I saw the movie Adaptations when I first got caught up in orchid-keeping. My brother insisted, once he had introduced me to the idea that I could share my home with orchids, that this step was required. He sent me the DVD and I dutifully watched: it was good. A good story, Meryl Streep of course an excellent star, and Nicolas Cage as the leading male, very good. Excellent: both of them as enticingly lush as any beckoning Ghost Orchid.

But now I have read the book on which the movie is based, Orchid Thief by Susan Orlean, and I have to say this, even Streep is not a good enough actress to capture the essence of the female lead in this true story: the journalist, Susan Orlean. In fact, it is a compliment to Streep's own natural character, her own integrity of spirit, that she chose not to convey the full sense of Susan Orlean's ignorance, shallowness, and ......

what's the polite word? uhm.... bullshit.

Reading Orlean's book is like living near a fetid swamp. Most of the time you don't quite notice the steaming odor, but now and then a breeze hits your nose just right and you exclaim "what a stink!" and you wonder if you are damaging your own ability to think clearly if you continue to breathe this air.

Page 148 in the chapter "Anyone Can Grow Orchids" is like that. Orleans writes: "Just then one of Martin's long-legged mud-colored dogs trotted into the house and bit me really hard. I made enough noise that everyone noticed immediately. Martin grabbed the dog and started discussing how interesting this was because the dog had never bitten anyone before. I thought the conversation was rather academic, so after listening for a second I limped over to the house and went to find some rabies medicine...."

You know, if Ms. Orleans wants to really make an important contribution as a journalist, maybe she should forget about orchids and tell us about this "rabies medicine" that you can keep at home in case your dog bites anyone. She could have rescued herself by following up with a vignette about how this ignorant staff writer for the New Yorker discovers that if you think you have contracted rabies, you have to go into the hospital for a very painful treatment only after they have killed the dog and confirmed that it was indeed rabid.

If the people with the secret orchid lairs in Florida are hiding some kind of secret rabies medicine, we need to know about it! Give the girl the Nobel prize for discovering it!

Sheesh. Get this book from the public library if you must read it, because it is a sin to put any more money into either the publisher or the author's wallets. And if you do, remember this rabies incident when you read some of her trash-talk about the orchid growers, Seminoles, and other folks she met.

Here's a link to a good interview with Streep and Orlean