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.

Categories: #Photography, Cee's Photo Challenge, Flower of the day, Marilyn Armstrong, orchids

Tags: #FOTD, #Photography, Cee's Flowers of the day, Marilyn Armstrong, orchids