Well, as per usual it’s been a very long time since my last post! I was waiting to do an update on my full water culture experiment but not a whole lot was happening so I kept waiting…and waiting. Even though I don’t have anything mind-blowing to share, I finally decided to write a post to show the orchids’ progress since I started the experiment in mid-May.
Exciting things are afoot here at Brooklyn Orchids. First and foremost, I’m happy to announce that I’ve finally switched over to my own my boyfriend’s website host, which will allow me a lot more flexibility in customizing my site. I’ve been wanting to do this for a long time, and with the help of my wonderful boyfriend (thankyouthankyouthankyou my dear!!), the time is now.
What does this mean for you as a reader? So far, not much, but you can expect to start seeing some changes here and there. I’m not very well versed in web tech stuff, so it’s going to take me awhile to figure how to do what I want to do around here. In the meantime, if you see anything weird going on with my blog, please don’t hesitate to comment and let me know!
The next announcement I have is that the Brooklyn Orchids 2013 Calendar is now available in my Zazzle store! The calendar is $23.00 and includes twelve months of my original orchid photography, mostly from my visit to the Orchid Show this past spring. It makes a great holiday gift for the orchid fiend in your life (and a great gift for yourself, of course!). I’ve also added a bunch of great new products to my store, including a variety of orchid iPhone cases, iPad cases, Kindle cases, and aluminum water bottles. I’m going to be adding even more products to the store soon. If you have any requests for a specific orchid photo of mine on a particular product, please let me know!
I have some new developments to write about since my last post about the nice surprise I woke up to almost a month ago. Since then, all of the buds on that Oncidium have opened up, and the plant has a lovely spray of lightly fragranced blooms:
Yikes, I’ve been seriously shirking my orchid blogging duties. I don’t even want to look back and see when I last did an Orchid of the Week blog. Well, because today is the last day of 2010 I figured I should get in one final blog post this year. And I’ve chosen to feature Phalaenopsis amboinensis, one which I have in my personal collection—and mine is beginning to spike!!
This orchid is native to Indonesia and has small, star-shaped waxy blooms with tiger-like striping. Take a look at this specimen (not mine):
It’s been awhile since I’ve posted any updates on my orchid collection because there hasn’t been a whole lot going on other than the blooming of the mystery dendrobium, which, by the way, now has two blooms. Each has taken on a more pinkish and greenish tinge in the throat than when they first opened. The faint coloring is a little hard to capture in a photo, but you get the idea:
Wow, so I totally skipped doing an Orchid of the Week post last Friday, for no good reason. I guess I just wasn’t really in the mood. But something that has gotten me in the mood to post is that my mystery Dendrobium is in spike! Check out the nubbin I noticed within some of its leaves a couple weeks ago:
I bought this guy on sale for $12 at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden shop, along with an Odontoglossom Geyser Gold that has since died. This Dendrobium, which wasn’t in bloom when I bought it, has been flourishing and putting out new growths every so often. And now, it looks like it’s gearing up to finally bloom for me! The nubbin has turned into a spike for sure:
Getting this orchid to bloom is particularly exciting for me, because it had no tag when I bought it and I have absolutely no idea what its flowers are going to look like. For all I know it’s not even a Dendrobium (though its foliage and canes suggest that it is).
So I will wait patiently for the mystery blooms to open up. Whatever they end up looking like, they will be a nice surprise. Stay tuned!