Thank you all....glad to be back. Camille, hello, I remember you. Hello and thank you, to members that I don’t know. I’ll try to stop in once in a while, and try to get to know you. One thing you can always count on at Orchiboard is a warm welcome. It took me a while, but I finally made myself log in. This site was sort of a painful reminder of the orchids I used to have, so I tried not to think about either. When you go from a 400 sq. foot fully automated greenhouse with over 300 species of orchids (90% of which were species), some being divisions from several hundred dollar plants, to 20 or so, weathered survivors hanging from the pergola out back, seeing all the beautiful flowers on here would have just made me feel guilty.
Unfortunately, the timing of this bloom was long awaited, but couldn’t have had worse timing. When my grandfather died, my grandmother really wanted be around long enough to see it bloom. By the time the bloom came last December, my grandmother had lost her eyesight, and when I was notified, was in the hospital with a short time to live. I sent my father the picture, but it was too late, she had lost her vision....so I hope she was at least told about it. Upon hearing all of this,I headed back from out of town to see her, but she died the night before my visit. I hadn’t seen her in a year or more, because my father and I had a huge argument, and weren’t speaking, and she was living with him. I feel bad that she didn’t get to see the flower, or myself, but hope she was coherent enough to at least hear about it. I still have 2 or 3 of this plant’s siblings, but this one was the alpha. I have a Vanda cross that I made shortly after this one that should have its first bloom soon. It too only survived with 1 or 2 siblings. I have not registered it yet, (and last time I checked, nobody else had either), it’s a cross of V. tesselatta x Vasco. Pine River ‘Pink’. I think it would only be right to put her name on that one when it blooms. I guess that way they can still be together in one way?
The pic attached is all I have left of my greenhouse,....well, besides the survivors out back.
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