My new orchids. Let me show you them.

Yay!! My Hausermann orchids arrived a couple hours ago via UPS. Of course I sat around inside all day waiting for them to show up, but it’s nasty outside so I can’t complain.

I had a mini panic attack this afternoon while waiting for the package (side note: now that I’m watching The Wire, “package” makes me think of heroin) because I suddenly wasn’t sure if the orchids would arrive in pots. I didn’t have five extra pots lying around the house and didn’t want to have to make an emergency run to Home Depot in the rain. Plus, the orchids I’d ordered were on sale so I thought maybe pots wouldn’t be included.

Fortunately all of my new plants came potted. I’ve already repotted each one so that I could check out their roots, and I took lots of pictures to post here. So I guess this is a sort of “orchid unboxing” post…how nerdy am I??

The orchids came really well-packed in a box lined with newspaper (Chicago Tribune, in case you were wondering). Each orchid was placed in the box lying down, individually wrapped in pink Easter basket stuffing and newspaper, and secured with masking tape. Then some additional pink stuffing was taped over the top of each pot to keep the medium from spilling all over the place.

It makes sense that Hausermann’s knows how to ship orchids safely, but I’d had no idea how they were going to do it. I pictured a box with a FRAGILE sticker, a bunch of bullshit packing peanuts, plants standing upright in the box. Thankfully, no bullshit packing peanuts!

Below is the happy little orchid family before I removed the pink Easter stuffing. Each came with an i.d. tag (hooray!):

Hausermann orchids

The two on the right are teeny tiny, like fit-in-the-palm-of-my hand tiny:

Tiny Tolumnia

How adorable is that? For reference, here’s another photo of the teensy orchids next to a regular-sized coffee mug:

Baby orchids

Anyway, I’m sure by this point you’re wondering exactly what kind of orchids I got. In order of biggest to smallest (left to right in the above pic), they are:

  • Zygopetalum Artur Elle x Blue Blazes ‘Purple Sky’
  • Phalaenopsis Yellow Butterfly
  • Phalaenopsis Laurel Blau
  • Paphiopedilum Wizard of Oz ‘Hausermann’s Toto’ AM/AOS x [Paph. Candy Apple x Paph. Pulsar]
  • Tolumnia Golden Sunset ‘Red’

How exciting! Oh yeah, and I’ve already mentioned this but a good deal bears repeating: these five orchids INCLUDING shipping & handling cost me $48.80. WIN.

Even more exciting, I’m finally going to the Orchid Show tomorrow, so there will be about a million photos to share afterward!

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