My 'chids got to play outside today... :D

[tom_e_boi]

I'm fairly new to this forum and thought I'd formerly introduce myself. My name is Tommy, I'm 32 and I've been obsessed with orchids since the first moment that I laid eyes on them. Which was well over a decade ago. I already had a greenthumb, which I inherited from my grandmother. I've dabbled in many different species of plants: roses, tulips, oriental hybrid lilies, and even carnivorous, just to name a few. But when I gazed upon my 1st orchid, a whole new world was opened up to me. Ever since then, I've been obsessed with them. They truly are parasitic, in the sense that they latch onto our hearts and have us cater to their every whim.
Tho after having to uproot and move a couple years ago, I went thru a dormant period and didn't grow any. Then, while browsing the garden center at the local superstore, I spotted a fresh shipment of NoID Phals had just arrived, and my addiction to orchids was rekindled. I went thru and inspected every single one of them before choosing two of the best. Even then, my appetite for them wasn't truly satisfied, so I went back to bring some more home. I rummaged thru the selection, which was larger due to another shipment of them coming in. I carefully selected two more, which had two plants in each container. (I like to think of it as buy two, get two free, lol...) So when I got them home, I had to repot them because they definitely looked crowded in the 4" pots that they were already in. Upon further inspection, I seen how they had been grown in even smaller 3" pots and then simply shoved into the 4" pots and packed tightly with extra sphagnum moss. The first two intertwined plants took almost an hour to untangle and separate, but luckily, the second two plants separated very easily. The two extra plants haven't bloomed yet, tho one has a spike w/ buds fixing to open up, and the other looks like it has two spikes budding out from the base of the plant. So I'm definitely looking forward to what each plant looks like when they do finally bloom. So those will definitely be a nice surprise, and I'll have plenty of flowers to carry me into this coming Spring.
Which brings me back to the originally subject in my title, that today finally warmed up to a comfortable 65+ degrees outside, so I decided to let my 'chids sit outside on my back porch where they could soak up some dappled sunshine filtering down thru the tree tops. Tho I had to bring them back inside before the temperature dropped again, but I certainly didn't mind. The forecast looks like there will be even more bright warm sunny days in the near future. So they'll get plenty of time outside, even tho it still gets chilly after sunset.
Well, I may only have half a dozen Phals in my collection for right now, and my obsession with orchids is satisfied (for now...), but I can already see that I'll have to expand back out into growing Dendrobiums, Cattleyas, etc. The more of them I get, the more of them I want, HeHeHe!