Day: 03/07/2020

DEFINITELY OFF OUR FEED – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 16 Comments

The pictures from last night look just like the pictures from the day before. Apparently every night, a conga line of raccoons take over the back deck. You can see the flying squirrels, but they seem to glide in from the woods and they don’t trigger the motion sensor because they are behind the feeder and post. I saw one last night, but by examining the timestamps, he (and probably his family) were there for a couple of hours. But they are hard to see.

If you look at the top of the pole in the first picture, it’s flat. Look at the second one. Ah! There’s the flying squirrel on top of the pole. They are gliding in from the back, so they don’t trigger the motion sensor.

To make up for that, I got some nice bird pictures today. Both Garry and I aren’t feeling well. Not coronavirus but very likely sinus infections. Our doctor has learned that if one of us has something, the other of us has it too, so we have two prescriptions of everything and I hope it works quickly. I’ve had a headache for a week and laryngitis for even more weeks. All I really want to do is sleep.

FOUR ORCHIDS – Marilyn Armstrong

/ Marilyn Armstrong / 9 Comments

March 7 – Four Orchids – FOTD

Day by day, more orchids bloom. It’s exciting, in a senior citizen sort of way. Although to be fair, I was very proud of my plants 40 years ago when my entire house looked like a nursery. My son points out he grew up in a jungle. He did. It was an old house with big cast iron radiators. What do you do when you have huge iron radiators in front of all your windows?

Macro orchid

You find a machine shop that does small jobs. You build metal trays that sit on top of the radiators. You fill each of the trays with gravel and add water to the trays. When the steam comes up, it creates a mist around all the plants sitting in the tray and hanging above them. Voila!

All four and a big bud

It worked gangbusters. Everything grew in that house. The windows were huge and the plants were even huger. I was very proud of my garden. It also took a lot of time to care for the more than 250 plants. I had to check each plant every day to make sure it looked healthy, hadn’t picked up red-spider or some other bug. And water those that needed water, not water those which didn’t.

More orchids

That was always the danger of bringing in new plants. No matter how classy the nursery looks, you can never be 100% sure that they don’t carry disease or destructive insects.

So I guess it isn’t a big surprise that I’m really happy that my orchids are growing. I never managed to grow orchids back then, though I did grow some ferns that were world-class. My orchids are not world-class, but they are mine. That’s something.