Photographic Memory

The Pretty and the No-So-Pretty

We have two pretty things to look at today, and one not-so-pretty. 

Let's get the pretty out of the way, shall we? This is Green Genius.  It has a very long pedigree but I like to call it Green Genius because as you can see from the buds, it's very green all over and just about the time you think they are going to be all-green flowers, the pink pops out.  (The dorsal and lateral sepals are very, very chartreuse.)

Next up, we have Cattleya Chocolate Drop.  These three little flowers are all we got after an incident with my sister-in-law's dog.  It is making a wonderful progress recovering the attack though.  I hate to think what the aroma in the greenhouse would be like if there were more than three.  As it is, the scent in there is very thick.

And now we have the ugly:

Those are bats.  Twenty-one of them to be exact.  IN. MY. ATTIC.  We are officially in bat country.  I made this discovery last weekend.  I had to go and get something and didn't bother to turn the light on since it was daytime and sunlight comes in through the vent in the peak of the roof.  I noticed it wasn't quite as bright as usual.  I flicked the light on and HELLO!  There they were.  I'm still creeped out.  If you touch the screen, they squirm.  Yikes!   
  
   

Purpley Goodness

I wish the photograph did this more justice, but this is what I have to work with.  The sunny one make it look more pink.  It just does not express the true purple-ness of this flower.  It's not so much a grapey purple, but a true purple nonetheless.  As you can see, there is another bud getting ready to go.  This one is what is called a sequential bloomer.  It can and (I hope) will keep producing bloom after bloom for a while.

Phragmepedium Albopupureum 'Sir Arthur'

On a not-so-good note, the flipping ants are taking over the greenhouse.  I have been driven completely mad with ant extermination.  They get in some of the orchid pots and make their little (or not-so-little to be more accurate) colonies and then when the pot gets watered, there is this mass exodus of ants all rushing out everywhere carrying their gross little white eggs.  They are also very foolish.  Why do you want to set up house in something that will only flood within 5 to 7 days?  Morons.  I am going to have to break down and haul every last pot and supply out into the yard and hose the damn thing down with chemicals.  The sad part is that the orchids are what is attracting them.  Every time one flowers, it produces sap on the flower spike and the little sugar-sucking bastards just love it.  ARG!

Boredom, Blossoms & Buffalo

My baby girl is away for 10 days.  I miss her so much.  She is having a ball with her cousin Madeline out in Abingdon, Virginia.  I don't know what I'm gonna do with myself.  The dog is getting lots and lots of extra attention.  I'm also spending a lot of time with my camera.

Ascocenda Su-Fun 'Beauty'.  My brother-in-law took this shot.  Looks like afternoon sun, right?  It was almost dark when he took it.  Yes, it's lit with a flash.  He is that good.

 

My yellow hibiscus.  The blossoms are the size of salad plates. 

My Phragmepedium 'Red Sky'.  While I was taking this, a hummingbird tried to feed on the flower.  I wish I hadn't frozen and thought to take the shot.  I was so afraid to scare him off that I couldn't move. 

 

Yes, people, there are buffalo in Virginia.  There is a farm near here that has eight of them.  I think at one point they were going to try to raise beefalo.  That didn't work out, so now the buffalo just hang out.    

 

 

Bloomers

My brother-in-law is a wizard with a camera.  He has taken some great shots of my orchids before and I got him to take some of my new favorite plant this weekend.  I had all but given up on this little fella because I though he just wasn't thriving.  I thought for sure he should have been bigger by now and since I'd never had an orchid quite this small before, I had assumed he was stunted.  The name pretty much says it all: Ascocentrum miniatum.  To give you an idea of how small it really is, the pot is the height of a fifty cent piece.

 

Late one night I was watering in the greenhouse and I kept smelling something reminiscent of lemon Pledge.  I soon found the source: Rhyncholaelia digbyana.  This plant was tucked in a corner and although I cared for it the way I had been told, in my mind it was a goner and was headed for the trash heap.  I was producing new leads but looked horrific.  Apparently for this orchid, looking horrible is no indicator of plant health.  Interestingly, she has no smell whatsoever during the day because the pollinator for this plant is a moth.

    

Here is an overall view of some of the plants in bloom right now:

   

And then there is my sleepy dog:

 

Prissy has done so well since Billie has been gone.  She has been a real trooper and seems undaunted by being solo for the first time ever.  We never cared much for her name when we first adopted her but we felt we couldn't change it since that's what she's known for the past 5 years.  Since we are nickname fools, the inevitable has happened.  We have a nickname for her that she seems to really respond to.  Muffin.  We have no clue why we started calling her Muffin, but looking at her now as I type this, her rear-end does rather look like a muffin top. 

P.S. I call all my orchids by name and they are each distinctly male or female to me.  Because I have a nickname fetish, they each have nicknames that only me or my sister-in-law understand.  A lot of them are just referred to by the second part of their name.  I refer to the one at the top as simply "miniatum" and the second one is simply "digbyana".  There are other multi-generic orchids I have such lengthy names, so I call them whatever strikes my fancy.  It cannot be stressed enough that John and I are total nicknames nerds.  At the time of her death, Billie had collected somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 different nicknames.   

My Path To Nerd-dom

My greenhouse is complete!!!  I am in heaven!  The only thing we have left to do is finish attaching the shade-cloth stand-off kit.  (Yes, it's all Greek to you isn't it?  There's a shade cloth that goes with the green house and it has a kit that makes it easy to roll up and adjust where and how much shade cloth you want to cover the greenhouse.)

All my plants will be in orchids nirvana!  WOOT!

   

Happy Easter, Happy Spring

It may only be 52 degrees out, but I can feel spring on the way.  Heading over to the in-laws for Easter dinner and I fully expect to return bloated!  Hope you are all having a wonderful weekend!

 

Time, Where Art Thou?

We leave town on Friday for Orlando and I'm pretty excited.  There are some wicked strains of the flu going around here in town and I am like psycho-woman trying to keep away from diseased people and sanitizing everything I come in contact with.  Fingers crossed people - we have 3 1/2 days to go!

It bugs me that my movie and book TypeLists are stagnant.  It has been kind of hectic lately with trip preparation and all, but it has been this way for a while regardless.  I have had little to no time to read or see movies lately and it kind of ticks me off.  I am a movie and book buff.  But so far in 2008, those things have been on the back burner.  Things have been just so out of whack.  Every week has seemed like a battle to be fought and by the time the weekend arrives we're wiped out.  Those three books I have listed over there are all still in progress.  I'm taking them with me on our trip, so I'm hoping that at least one will be finished soon. 

I am so behind on my movie habit.  There are a ton of flicks I meant to see in the theater and are now destined to be rentals.  My movie buddies have been busy so far this year as well.  Our schedules seem to be clashing as of late.  I am a total movie SUCKER.  It is a serious sickness and I am going through withdrawals.  Need. Movies.  NOW.  (I seem to have a lot of sicknesses, don't I?)

One thing that has taken more of my regular book reading time has been a new blog - Forever Amber.  It's a scream!  I have been wading through Amber's archives for the past couple of weeks.  She's a Scot and she is a total riot.  She has neighbor issues like me.  (My neighborhood has turned into a war zone lately due to new construction.  Dear God they're trying to kill me.  I need SLEEP people!)

One last thing.  I posted 3 pics of myself on Valentine's Day asking for help in deciding which one to use for my blog photo and got two votes: one vote for photo #1 and one for photo #3.  Since I didn't want to have to choose between the two that were voted for, I chose the one that wasn't voted for.  Thanks to Aly and Nicole for voting! 

(The orchids featured today are Potinara Free Spirit 'Lea' and Phaleanopsis Baldan's Kaleidoscope 'Golden Treasure') 

   

A Small Amount of Cheer

I am still battling the snooky-snots.  My head hurts, I think I have a low-grade fever and I wanna go home. 

It is dead on Main Street in this town today.  There has been little to no business.  There's still some snow on the ground and here in Virginia - at least this part - people get nervous if it's a little colder than usual and there's snow.  Even if the roads are clear, they get nervous looking at the white stuff.  I think I may close early today. 

On the cheery side, I am getting my first orchids blooms of the season.  This makes me giddy as a school girl.  After much hard work and perserverance, all 4 dozen or so of my plants have survived the cold and are happily blooming here in my store. 

Here is the infamous "white moth" orchid:                                                                              

This is one of two plants that were in the same pot.  I divided them and they each now have two bloom spikes.  It is a multi-generic phaleanopsis that has slightly smaller than average blooms.  This flower is 3 inches wide and is one of seven flowers on one stem. (Some of these can get 6 to 7 inches wide and have 12 to 13 flowers per stem.)  Ain't she purty?