So I guess you can say I am new again (like everything old). I've been rather diminished in the orchid game for a while (a few years) but the bug has bitten hard again. My measly dozen or so plants that have made it through my long trek through 15 years of the hobby have suddenly expanded to about thirty, and all of a sudden I have a vivarium where a laundry room was.
I suppose this is a relapse.
First started growing orchids when I was 14 in Houston, have gone up and down with them. At one point had nearly 2000 plants in a 10x20x12' greenhouse in the east texas pineywoods, and a budding breeding program (har). Lost almost all of my collection to a freeze when I was in college, in 2003. Got back into things a little between 06 and 09, but had some personal drama curb things for a while. Now things are back with a vengeance, but I am an apartment dweller and now am back to like my beginnings as a youngster, under lights, in love with Cattleyas.
My collection is mostly species, with a few primary hybrids, one hybrid that is a primary crossed back to a parent species, and the complex hybrid is Rsc. (I believe is the nomenclature now) Goldenzelle 'Lemon Chiffon' that may in fact bloom for the first time after I bought it 4 or 5 years ago as a seedling at home depot. It happens to have been one of the first orchids I coveted in the Stewart Orchids catalog, and that was when they were still in carpenteria, and the 2" clones of the mother plant were $75.
-Cecily