Orchid Mania

The orchid is Mother Nature's masterpiece.
— Robyn

An orchid in a deep forest sends out its fragrance even if no one is around to appreciate it.
― Confucius

If I see an orchid that's fantastically expensive, I'll buy it. It's worth it, for no other reason than it gives me pleasure.
— Lee Radziwill

My first orchid was a Cattleya Orchid. It looked something like this:

This isn't a picture of my orchid, it only had one bloom, but it was massive. I bought it as a seedling and it’s amazing to me that it survived because I knew nothing about orchids at the time. Nevertheless, it grew. Dare I say it flourished? It took seven years before there was a single bud on it, and six more months before the bud opened. The bloom stayed open for months, until the summer came.

The plant graced the end of the kitchen counter, and although the window air conditioning unit we had at the time was in the dining room, apparently the blast of cold air was strong enough to reach my plant. I learned the hard way that orchids don’t like blasts of cold air. Not only did I lose the blossom, I lost the entire plant.

I’ve been careful with the orchids I’ve bought since then and currently I have about half a dozen of them.

A few months ago, I did a post about indoor gardening and included a picture of the orchids on my kitchen window ledge. One had a couple of bloom stalks that had run their course and the blooms had died, but it also grew a new bloom stalk that was full of blooms. The other plant had a bloom stalk that was still in bud.

The smaller orchid is still blooming, and the buds are now open on the second orchid.

I also have a one of the orchids in my office blooming at the moment:

You notice there’s only a couple of leaves on this orchid. I have another one that’s down to just one leaf, and I’m not sure why. They all get treated the same way and the others are okay so far (*knock on wood*). Though I’ve never used it in the past, I bought some orchid food for them – I figure I have nothing to lose.

The prize in my collection is my Oncidium Orchid:

Unfortunately it’s not too happy with me right now because it’s getting too much sun so its blooms are starting to fall off, but I’m going to give it a shot of the plant food and maybe try and find a new place to keep it.

I also picked up a couple of mini orchids, but they were already starting to lose their blooms before I got them home.

A lot of people are intimidated by orchids, but they’re surprisingly easy to grow. If you like plants, I encourage you to get one. If you’re afraid of overwatering, try using ice cubes. The mini orchids take one ice cube a couple of times a week, the larger plants take 3 cubes, two or three times a week. My neighbor, who has some beautiful orchids, swears by the ice cube method of watering.

So next time you see an orchid for sale, go ahead and splurge. Next thing you know, you’ll have a shelf full of them, like me. :-)

Meteorism Monday

meteorism ~ abdominal cramps and swelling due to flatulence

You ever have one of those brilliant ideas that turn out to be not so brilliant after all because it has a ripple effect that had you thought things through a little better might have been enough to make you think twice? Yeah, that was me yesterday.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago about how I wasn’t happy with the orchid on my kitchen window sill and was considering moving it. Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Well, this particular simple thing took me half a day.

The little table I was thinking about moving it to had a very large ceramic pagoda which had to be relocated. First I thought it could go up on the bookcases in my office. So I got up on the step stool and shuffled things around and the pagoda fit - just barely. But it looked terrible up there.

So then I figured it could go on the bookcase in the upstairs hallway, which was lower and wider. I took the pagoda apart, took it upstairs, and removed the large ceramic knight on his horse and the dragon he was fighting from the shelf. The insanely dusty shelf.

Naturally I dusted the shelf off before reassembling the pagoda, which looks great up there, especially since the opposite shelf has a Chinese doll in a case and mythological beastie. However, I couldn’t just have one clean shelf, so I ended up dusting off the rest of the rather large bookcase. And the books on it.

At this point moving the orchid was simple, but the one drawback of the table is that it sits between the cat tree and the bookcase in the dining room, and the cats like to use it as a gateway to the plants on top of the bookcase. Which is why the pagoda was there in the first place, to block their passage.

So to kill two birds with one stone, I decided to plant the sweet potato vine in a small planter box and drape it over a bamboo trellis I just happened to have. This necessitated finding my planting stuff in the depths of the basement - no mean feat in itself. I found a partial bag of dirt that had just enough for the vine planter, but not for the pineapple that is also growing hydroponically.

Now, the sweet potato vine has been growing for several weeks, and it kind of grew up around the other plants on the window ledge. It even had a shoot wrapped around the stick in the orchid pot. And another that was wound around part of the window. And several tendrils were growing up and intermingling with the hanging plant above it. In retrospect, it might have been easier to just leave it there.

But all’s well that ends well. The orchid is in its new home, the sweet potato is in its new pot, and the plant hanging in the kitchen window received a much needed divesting of dead matter.

I don’t know if you can tell by the picture, but the sweet potato vine looks a little wilted. In my defense, it was already wilting before I planted it in dirt. I’m not sure if it didn’t like the sun we were getting, or if it was just tired of being hydroponic. I’m hoping it’ll be happier in dirt, and the blinds should shade it a bit from the sun.

But I guarantee you, I will think twice before deciding to move a plant again. :-D

Myrmidon Monday

myrmidon ~ follower; hireling; mercenary

I have a problem. I currently have four orchids. Two are tucked away on a stand next to the deck doors in the dining room, and two are on the window ledge of the kitchen. All four get pretty much the same exposure to the sun.

One of the two orchids in the kitchen is really too big for the window ledge, but I’m afraid to move it. I once had a beautiful cattleya orchid that I grew from a seedling. It took seven years for it to bloom, but the single blossom it produced was magnificent. It, too, started out on the window ledge of the kitchen, and when it became too big I moved it to a counter that was further back, but it seemed happy enough.

Unfortunately, I failed to take into account that the new space was across from the air conditioner in the dining room window and it did not like the cold air at all. I tried moving it back to the window but it was too late and I lost the orchid.

The bigger of the two orchids currently on my window ledge seems to be of sturdier stock. It’s bloomed a few times and last time it did so the bloom stalk had eleven blossoms on it. Normally once the blossoms fall off I’d trim back the stem to allow for new growth, but on the advice of my neighbour this time I left it alone.

Much to my surprise, it did get a new shoot off the original bloom stalk, which I promptly accidentally knocked off. Then it got another one, which I accidentally broke off while trying to tie it to a stick to make it a little more upright. When it got a third one, I left it alone, despite the fact that it the leaves are on one side of the plant and the bloom stalk is sticking out the other side. And then it hedged its bet by producing a second bloom stalk to stick out a third side of the pot.

Now my problem is this. There’s only so much room on my window sill and the leaves of the orchid are touching the cold glass. I don’t much like the arrangement, but it’s the only way to position it to minimize the possibility of knocking off one of the bloom stalks.

The blooms will keep going for weeks, provided nothing touches them, but both stalks stick out slightly over the sink. I could make room for the plant on the stand in the dining room - it won’t be easy but it’s do-able - but I’m afraid if I move it it’ll die, just like my cattleya orchid did. Plus it’s right beside the cat tree and I know at least one of my cats will try to snack on it.

Maybe I’ll just keep crossing my fingers. It’s worked so far. ;-)

Magnality Monday

magnality ~ wonderful or great thing

I swear the weather lately is on drugs, and potent drugs at that.

After a pleasantly warm week, Saturday was insanely hot and humid, despite being overcast and rainy. Sunday, however, was incredibly cold and rainy. We're talking "put your jacket on if you have to go outside" cold.

Colour me unimpressed! And apparently this is supposed to be the pattern for the rest of the summer.

So . . . remember how I was supposed to be weeding out books from my office? Well, a funny thing happened last week. I went to the gym on Thursday and a couple of members were talking about these books one of them had to get rid of . . . science fiction books. To make a long story short, she had a van full of boxes of books that were destined for donation to a charity yard sale, but she was willing to let me go through them first. Since her time was limited, we loaded half the boxes (six of them) into my truck so I could go through them over the weekend.

It would have been so easy to just take them all. But two things stopped me. First, my shelf space is limited (which is why I'd been trying to weed out books in the first place). And second, so is my reading time.

And I guess maybe a third thing would be how unimpressed the hubby would be. I'm already fortunate that book hoarding isn't grounds for divorce. ;-)

If I could do nothing else but read all day, I might have kept more that I did. But although I have been making an effort to work in a little more reading lately, it would take me the rest of my life to read all those books. So I showed great restraint and only kept a box and a half.

I get to go through the rest of them today. :-)

And of course just when I have all these new books to read, I pick up another oral history project to transcribe so my free time will be limited for the foreseeable future.

But don't worry, very little of my writing/editing schedule will change. What will change is the amount of time I've been wasting on games and mindless surfing. Who knows, maybe I'll even develop some good working habits for a change.

As mind boggling as it is, I now have nine blossoms open on my orchid's bloom stalk and the tenth one is almost there. The last time I was this excited about an orchid was for this one:

I grew this orchid from a seedling and it took seven years for it to blossom. And I'm really glad I took several pictures of it because shortly after this I moved it from the window ledge to a counter top where it still got lots of light, but it was also in direct line of the cold air coming from the air conditioner.

This is when I learned an important lesson about orchids. They do not like cold air.

*sigh*

Mycetism Monday

mycetism ~ fungus poisoning

Monday again, eh? And so soon, too.

*sigh*

Last week was pretty darned cold. How cold was it? It was so cold we got frost one night and it pretty much killed the hanging plant I got for mother's day last weekend.

Frost! With only one week to go until June. I know Canada has a reputation for being cold and all, but this is ridiculous! I'm just really glad I haven't bought any annuals for my front garden yet. Maybe next weekend.

And in true Canadian fashion . . . Saturday was so cold I was wearing my NaNo hoodie and contemplating turning the heat on, and Sunday was warm enough that I had the deck door open.

I have only myself to blame.

A couple of weeks ago it was so warm that I finally broke down and bought some capris length leggings to wear for my work outs. I wore them once and just about froze when the weather turned cold again.

So then last weekend was enough that I was thinking of transitioning to skirts instead of pants and I got the urge to paint my toenails. They're a nice subtle shade of pink, but they've been covered up ever since the polish dried because it turned even colder than the preceding week.

This week is supposed to start warming up (between rain showers) but I'm not going to take any chances. I'll stick to wearing layers and I'll avoid freshening up my toe polish.

Fortunately, although last week was cold it was bright and sunny, so my orchid is doing well. I have another bud open, bringing the number of blossoms on the bloom stalk to eight. EIGHT! And it looks like the last two buds will be opening this week.

I can't believe I'm going to have an orchid with ten blossoms on its bloom stalk. Just call me the orchid whisperer. :-)

Molariform Monday

molariform ~ shaped like a molar

Where do I start? *shakes head sadly*

Let's start with the weather, which kind of skipped over spring and went straight to summer. We had a few record-breaking high temperature days towards the end of the week. And with the nicer weather we have the birds returning to serenade us. Like this guy:

This tree is at the very back of our yard. And in this tree is a robin, who apparently has an app on his phone that lets him know when sunrise is, because even on overcast days he starts his damned chirping at sunrise and keeps it up until mid-morning. I swear if I had a sling shot I'd be using him for target practice!

Can't spot him? Let me help:

Chirping should not be allowed in the morning until I've had a coffee!

Last week was pretty unremarkable. Mostly what I did was edit Lucky Dog, which you can read about HERE.

Sunday, of course, was Mother's Day, which was kind of a mixed bag for me. I was all set to have a relaxing morning of painting, only to discover I had everything I needed . . . except the actual paint. So after a family brunch, we stopped at Staples where I picked some up, and for a $5 donation to the Special Olympics, I received a Mother's Day gift bag that had a really nice message pad and a can of cinnamon coated almonds.

My pleasure in the gift lasted until I got home and tried one of the almonds. I think the cinnamon must have been mixed with cement, because I bit into one and broke a tooth to the point where I don't think the dentist will be able to save it. And we were having corn on the cob for supper. *sigh*

Still, it wasn't all bad. I had a visit from my little Ellie-beans and got to read her a story:

And remember my old friend, Blackie the squirrel? He left a Mother's Day present for me in the front garden:

So it looks exactly like the tulips in my next-door-neighbor's garden. It's the thought that counts. Right? ;-)

And I got a bit of a chuckle out of Dante's unique solution to the "Nook War" he and Taz are waging. They both like the book nook and neither are willing to share.

And finally, my orchid has six - count 'em - six blooms open! And there's still more buds on the end of the stalk! So beautiful!

So all in all, I'd say the good out-weighed the bad yesterday. At least that's what I'll keep telling myself until I visit the dentist. ;-)

Mnemonist Monday

mnemonist ~ one from whose memory nothing is erased

Last week I did something I haven't done for ages - I picked up a paint brush and painted a picture. It wasn't a very good picture, but it helped me remember how much I used to love to paint. It was very relaxing too. So I decided that it was something I should try and make time for more often, and I've designated Sunday mornings as my "art time."

And no, I'm not going to post a picture of my painting here. There were a couple of parts that were okay, but for the most part it really wasn't good. What I'll do is turn the sheet over and do a different painting next week. Water colour paper is too expensive to waste. ;-)

Instead, I'm going to show you a picture of my messy cat(s).

This picture was taken last evening. After the mess had already been picked up earlier for vacuuming. They really do like to have their favourite toys where they can see them. Taz is quite proud of his tissue paper nest, and he quite likes pink. Every once in awhile I'll spirit away a few of the really shredded pieces (but only when he's not looking) and replace it with a couple of new sheets. And they all love to burrow through the tissue paper to find a toy. Now, if I could only train them to put the toys back in the basket when they're done.

Last week a friend and I went on our monthly thrift store run. Pickings were a little on the slim side - a pair of black jeans to replace a pair I'd worn out, a couple of books, and a tea mug. I read one of the books yesterday - Incantation by Alice Hoffman, and quite enjoyed it.

Then Saturday was the annual book sale at Saint Peter's Church. This is an event my daughter and I look forward to every year and we were lined up with a handful of other bibliophiles at 8:30 a.m. waiting for the doors to open at 9.

While we did pick up a few books, we showed a great deal more restraint than in previous years. This was due in part to the sheer number of books we each possess. Good thing we don't live under the same roof anymore. And it was also due to the over-pricing of the collectible books this year - very disappointing considering the poor shape the books were in.

The edits of Lucky Dog are going well. I'm at the halfway point and I think if I stay away from the games and stop futzing around so much, there's no reason I can't get this round of edits done this week and hopefully send it off to my betas on the weekend.

I finally got around to updating my writing blog. If you missed the post you can find it HERE. One of the things I did was change things around on the sidebar on the right a bit. I have a place for what I'm currently editing as well as novels waiting for edits. It would be nice if I could find a way to have the editing bars reflect the work I've done editing, but I haven't quite figured that one out yet.

And look! Count 'em - the orchid has four blossoms now.

And call me crazy, but I think I'm going to have two more open this week. Awesome sauce! :-)

Microcephalic Monday

microcephalic ~ having a very small head

So . . . I was sitting in my recliner yesterday morning and just as I glanced towards the dining room where the cats were gathered at the deck door watching the ducks in the pool, I caught a flash of orange moving across our deck. WTF?

So I went over to have a closer look and saw a fox trot back to the pond to have a drink, and then under the fence into the next door neighbor's yard. He was too quick, and too far away, for a picture, but it was kind of nice to see him. We thought the foxes were gone from the neighborhood but apparently not.

Daphne had been sticking pretty close to her nest most of last week and I could see she'd been starting to line it with down. But the weather for most of the week wasn't that great and I figured if she had eggs she was sticking with them. However, Friday she was gone and the nest is still empty. Now that I've seen the fox, I'm kind of thinking she's abandoned it for good. Smart move, Daphne. There were too many people at the front of the house anyway.

Last week was a busy one for me, I spent a lot of time out of town, which means there wasn't a whole lot of writing/editing done, especially for the last half of the week. This week will be only slightly better because I have appointments on three days, but none of them will take me out of town.

The highlight of last week was a trip I took to Casino Rama. One of our local travel agencies has a bus that goes up once a month and it's something I've always wanted to try. I finally talked a friend into going with me and we had a blast. I even came home with more money than I started out with! Okay, so it was only about $18.00 more, but still . . .

It was a real bargain too. For the cost of $8.00 the bus takes you up and back, and you get a free lunch which was worth twice that. You get the entire day to play in the casino and then you're home in time for supper.

I can easily see where people can get addicted to it. There's nothing quite like the thrill of watching your winnings pile up. I wouldn't mind trying it again. They have day trips to the casino in Niagara in the summer, so at least when I run out of money I'll have something else to do for the day. LOL

Did I mention the bus arrived in Orillia (where Casino Rama is) in the midst of a snow storm? Not quite a blizzard, but bad enough that the road conditions closed down a major highway to the west of the casino due to an accident. Snow. *shakes head sadly*

My orchid doesn't seem to care about the temperature outside, just so long as I keep watering it. And make a concentrated effort not to over water it. But it has a third bud open now:

It was hard to get a good picture of it because the blooms were facing in different directions, but look how many buds I've still got! Any guesses as to how many might open? I'm thinking at least two more for sure . . . I don't think I've ever had more than two or three flowers on a bloom stalk before. I'm very excited!

While it was kind of rainy and miserable early last week, there was snow here on Friday as well. Where'd our spring go?? I refuse to dig out my winter coat again. It's supposed to start warming up a bit this week, not enough to have any doors or windows open, but some. In the meantime, I'll just wear a sweater under my coat. :-D

Wednesday Fail

Okay. So I didn't exactly forget my Wreck This Journal post, I just didn't have a chance to do any wrecking last week. But I don't want you to leave empty handed, so I took a couple of pictures for you of other things. :-)

First we have an orchid in bud:

This was very exciting for me. I love orchids. A long time ago, when I worked in a grocery store, I used to admire the orchids in the plant department, but since I was only getting minimum wage, I couldn't afford one. However, I made friends with the plant lady and she had two orchids that were on death's door that she sold me for $5.

I took these orchids home and nursed them back to health, and lo and behold, against everyone's expectations, they bloomed. Granted they'd only get two or three blossoms on their bloom stalks, but the blooms would last for weeks.

I also had an orchid I'd started from a seedling that took seven years to bloom, but boy was it worth the wait. The blossom was huge.

Now we fast forward to a couple of years ago when we had an extremely hot summer and I learned the hard way that orchids do not like air conditioning. The orchid I'd started from scratch was a few yards away from the air conditioner, but in the direct line of cold air. And the two I'd nursed back to health were on a table beside the air conditioner.

I thought I'd lost them all, but I was able to nurse one of my two from the grocery store back to health. During the winter I put it on the kitchen window ledge so it'd have lots of sunlight, and it seemed much happier. Then one day I noticed it was getting a bloom stalk. I kept turning it to keep it from touching the cold window until the stalk was long enough that I could gently twist tie it to a stick in the pot.

Today my vigilance was rewarded when I saw this:

I can't help wonder how many of those buds I can get to bloom. :-)

And now for something completely different . . .

Remember I was telling you the ducks were back? Yesterday I could see water splashing up from the pool and went to see what was going on. I remember how much fun Daphne used to have taking a bath in the pool. Well, Daphne wasn't having much fun. She had two male ducks after her and they seemed to be trying to drown her - they kept shoving her head under the water. So I went out an yelled at them, and they took their argument onto dry land where they chased her into the neighbor's yard.

Then this morning, when I was leaving for the gym, I heard a rustling in the front garden. I just figured it was the wind. But when I came home I noticed this:

You might need to click on it for a better view, but it looks like Daphne found the perfect place to hide.

I'd say spring has well and truly sprung, wouldn't you? ;-)