In mid-January, I shared some of the orchid blooms that had opened up in our greenhouse. A lot more action has happened since then—even more orchids have bloomed. So I’m back with fresh photos…including two orchids that I’ve had for 11 years without blooming once! Before we take a look at all of them, please enjoy this shot of a bright, sunny winter afternoon inside the greenhouse:
Yeah, I basically just post here a few times a year now. Eventually I’d like to get back to posting more regularly, but I’ve been much more focused on my Adventures of Herman blog and Instagram. And over the past few months we were busy with getting our new home move-in ready. We moved in at the end of January (hooray!!) and are still getting settled in.
We will be building a greenhouse in our back yard, like I mentioned, but that isn’t going to happen until June. So I needed a temporary indoor setup for my orchids once we moved. First I put them in my office, on shelves by the eastern-facing windows:
Happy Black Friday Day After Thanksgiving, everyone! My husband and I flew to St. Louis yesterday to visit with my parents for a few days and had a lovely dinner with them last night (thanks, Mom!).
Like me, my mom is an orchid enthusiast, and she currently has 15 orchids in the house. They’re spread out over a few different rooms, but most of them are getting southern exposure and are looking quite well. Two of them are blooming like gangbusters at the moment, and they’re so gorgeous that I wanted to share! Apologies for the iPhone quality photos—I actually FORGOT to pack my camera for this trip! Who am I?! I never forget my camera!
First up is a nice, large Oncidium Intergeneric Green Valley Honey ‘Sweet Lady’ which has one spike in full bloom and a second spike in development:
I’ve tried growing three different Paphiopedilums (lady slippers) and have killed two out of those three. The third, however, has been chugging along happily and put up a spike a little while ago. And now, I’m so proud to say that it is currently in bloom, with one fully opened flower and two developing buds!
Surprise! Bet you thought you weren’t going to see an Orchid of the Week post today, didn’t you? This regular feature has totally fallen by the wayside lately, and for that I apologize. I’ve actually been busier with work over the past few weeks, and then last Friday I was out and about preparing for that hurricane thing that happened.
Anyway, this week I’m featuring another orchid from my own collection, the Dendrobium aggregatum. For the record, mine has not bloomed yet, but I’ve only had it for a few months. This orchid is a bright, cheery plant that can produce loads of yellow blooms:
This week’s orchid is the Dendrobium Green Lantern, in honor of the movie that comes out in theaters today. Okay, so this is just a good excuse to post a picture of Ryan Reynolds in costume:
On to the Green Lantern orchid. The Dendrobium Green Lantern is a lovely hybrid of Thai and Vietnamese species (Dendrobium Dawn Maree x Dendrobium cruentum) with a furry coral-colored lip and white petals with light green striping.
I’m not really sure where the “Green Lantern” name came from, because there are certainly much greener orchids out there (like the Aeranthes grandiflora, which I featured awhile back). But hey, it’s still gorgeous no matter what. And who knows—maybe it has some sort of superpowers. 😀