Blue Orchids

I beg your indulgence for yesterday's purely commercial post. I was teaching myself how to make pages on my blog, and one page is devoted to my books.  Thinking I was saving the post as a page, I clicked "save" and oops - blog post!  Well, at least some of you will now know about my gardening book.

Yesterday after running several errands and appointments, my husband and I went to Lowe's to pick up my Valentine's Day present. But unfortunately, they were sold out! I'd seen a blue orchid there the week before that just captured my imagination. I'm not much of an orchid person. I have one phaelenopsis that I've written about and it's sort of like a pet or a mascot in the plant room. I'm more impressed by its stamina and ability to thrive under my ignorant care than anything else about the plant.  So it took me by surprise when this blue orchid captivated me.

Well, we went to Lowe's where I had seen the display, but unfortunately they were all sold out.  It's probably for the best. As I researched blue orchids today, I found out that some are dyed similarly to the way carnations are dyed. One way to tell is by looking carefully at the flowers. Tips and buds may be white tinged, and any new blossoms will be white.  While there are indeed some authentic blue orchids, the vibrant, almost neon blue colors I saw on the plants at Lowe's may have been the dyed fakes.  Who's to say? Sniff sniff...I didn't get a chance to find out!

Here's a great article I found detailing how to tell fake from real blue orchids.

House Plant Care

I spent time on Sunday fussing with my house plants. Poor babies have been neglected other than the weekly watering. My plant room faces north east, with most of the light bright, diffuse morning light.  Luckily I seem to be able to grow almost any house plant I want to in that room, and I even over winter my geraniums from the front porch window boxes in the plant room and in a spare bedroom facing the same light exposure.

This phaelenopsis orchid is still blooming. It's the one I rescued from Lowe's in late 2009.  It was on sale for a few dollars and had a big hole in the leaf. Well, the hole is still there, and it's still blooming. I've never grown an orchid before and this one is extraordinary. When the flowering branch is finished, the petals drop off like tiny moths, and a new flowering branch quickly forms. It's just stunning and I want to add more orchids to my collection.

The African violets, however, are taking over the house. Most are the solid purple colored ones.  The one fancy variety I received from my sister is still growing and it looked severely pot-bound, so I decided to repot it. Much to my surprise, it wasn't just pot-bound; there were four plants now instead of one!  I planted each one in a separate pot and am growing them under lights in the basement for the May Master Gardener plant sale, along with several purple ones I want to re-home.

I cleaned up some dead leaves, gave a few plants a good rinse to rinse out any salts that had accumulated in the pots, and general tidied them all up, ending by giving each one a shot of fertilizer.  One of our next household projects will be to create custom-build, tile topped plant bookcases under the windows.  My plant shelves consist of snack tables with a board over them.  It's ugly but efficient.  My very handy husband has since sketched out a custom build shelving system that will go around two walls of the room. Tile will fit on the top and keep moisture off the wood.  Underneath, room for more books.  On top, room for more plants.

Does he know me, or what?

Phaelanopsis Orchid Still Blooming Two Years Later

Almost two years to the day, and the pink phaelanopsis orchid I purchased in December 2009 continues to bloom without ceasing.  It still has the round hole in the middle of the leaf as if someone used a hole punch on it, but every time one stem finishes blooming, another appears.  I've had it in my bright, south facing office, but it is actually doing better in the cool east-facing plant room on the first floor. I water it once a week and that is it.  Everyone always told me that orchids were fussy, difficult plants. Not this one.  If you look very closely at the photo, you can see the beginning of yet another flower stem appearing under the old one.  I love this flowering houseplant and for a $2 bargain plant from the sale rack at Lowe's, it has been a wonderful houseplant!

I hope your Thanksgiving was great. I spent the day curled up in the living room recliner reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  I loved it and recommend it if you are looking for a good novel with very engaging, real characters. I like books like this but they are so hard to find. The last book I read that was similar to this in how I was drawn into the characters was John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meaney, an older book that I checked out of the library in August.  After reading how the author struggled to get The Help published (I think I read that she received 65 rejections before an acceptance for publication, and she spent over five years working on it) I am feeling bolder about my own literary efforts. I write for a living, but writing sales and marketing copy and informative non fiction is so different from writing fiction and creative non fiction. I want to write a story that makes a difference but I lose heart so easily.  When I read about other authors' struggles, I feel better and not so alone. It makes me realize that writing rarely comes easily for anyone - and that for most of us, writing something of quality takes work.

So today is is back to work, albeit with some breaks in the schedule to finish planting bulbs.  I still have over 100 daffodils left in the garage that must get into the ground over the next week before the ground finally freezes solid. I tackled planting the tulip bulbs yesterday - 50 "Easter Joy" mixed pastels to add to the pink pastel tulips in the backyard planted near the deck (to avoid deer.)  Luckily for us, the weather looks like it will hold out and remain warm and sunny during the day, so I can get out there and get a few more bulbs in each day!

Raz got his sutures out this Wednesday and his infected leg healed up fine. He's very full of himself now that he has gained some weight. He was screaming to get out of his bedroom this morning and go for his daily excursion around the house!  I gave him a green stuffed mouse to play with and boy, he must be a great hunter of real mice.  He really played with that thing until I thought he would pop it the way Shadow does with the stuffed mice. She likes nothing better than stealing the cat toys and giving them one gigantic CHOMP in her massive German shepherd jaws, then dropping the remains of the popped mouse toy in front of the cats as if to say innocently, "What? I was just helping you!"

"Get away from my new toy, dog."

"What? I'm not supposed to pop the cat toys?"

Fool Me Once Orchid

Naughty orchid. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice - shame on me.

This is the phaelenopsis orchid I bought at Lowe's for $3. The dendrobium didn't make it. The phael, however, is still blooming. It loves the bright light of my office.

Here she is (I call it she for some reason) on my office windowsill. This window overlooks the orchard. We still have snow everywhere, but this weekend temperatures are supposed to get as high as 50. Bye-bye snow. I won't miss you!







Note the tiny little green shoot in the pot. I got so excited when I saw it! I watered it carefully. Each day I observed it, hoping I'd have a tiny baby orchid.




No dice. Guess what? It's clover.

How a clover seed got into this pot in the middle of winter is anyone's guess, but I know clover when I see it. And it isn't even a four-leaf lucky clover!

Orchids!

The days after Christmas, many people head to the shops to find Christmas bargains. Ornaments. Wrapping paper.

I head out to Lowe's and look for houseplant bargains. Christmas money in my hot little hands, I found their houseplant area so picked over there were only a few stragglers left. But upon close inspection....orchids!

I snagged a Phaelaopsis for $2 and a Dendrobium for $2.

I've never grown orchids before. My sister Ann grew them in our house in Floral Park. We had a weird house. It was built as what they used to call a "Mother Daughter House". The mother had an apartment upstairs, but used the same entrance as the daughter, who presumably lived on the first floor.


When my parents bought the house, they sealed off the gas line and water pipes in the old kitchen but left the cabinets. My childhood bedroom led into a kitchen, then a bathroom. Well, we had kitchen counters and cabinets, which we used as the linen closet. My sister Ann was pretty ingenious. She loved plants and wanted to study botany. She hung up plant lights under the old kitchen cabinets and used the top of the old counter as her plant laboratory!

She ordered orchids mail order and grew so many different types under those lights. I learned something from her about them, but I plan today to do a little sleuthing on the Internet to make sure I care for my new beauties.

They sure need some TLC. There's a reason they were on the $2 table! But the phael is blooming still, which is a nice plus. He's tucked behind the radio in my office. I've always wanted an orchid in my office. The other is next to the tabletop fountain in the plant room.

I also scored a second Christmas cactus, this one also marked down from $10 to $2. They should have priced it at fifty cents. The poor thing. Talk about taking a beating. It looked as if it had been dragged through the snow. I bought my peach colored one before Christmas, a healthy but small plant. This one is a hot pink color, as evidenced by the dead blossoms trapped in the silvery wrapper around the pot. Half the plant is dead, rotted away, and I spent a little time this morning pulling away dead portions. I'm left with half a plant. I've got it safely tucked in on my plant able in the plant room, nestled between the wintering geraniums and the African violets. Hopefully it will recover.

If anyone has some good orchid care websites, share links!