Back to OB after a very long absence!

[camille1585]

It's been a long time (well over a year) since I've been here on a regular basis, so wonder how many familiar faces are left... Not many I'll guess.

I lost interest in my orchids over the past few years, so naturally came here less. Not because I'm not crazy about them any more, but because I was sick and tired of battling mealy bugs (9 year ongoing battle) and completely dejected when they started spreading all sorts of diseases in my collection, both virus and fungal/bacterial. As a result, I lost interest, it was becoming an unrewarding hobby. So now I'm taking the final step and destroying what's left of my original collection, sterilize the growing area, and start all over. I'm saving a few orchids which were unaffected by the mealies, and that's it.

It's kind of fitting that I'm restarting my collection nearly at the same time as the 10 year anniversary of my OB membership- the original start of the addiction! My new orchids will stay on the windowsill at my work until I'm able to declare my home to be insect free.

We'll see how often I manage to come here and post, my life has changed quite a bit in recent years and free time is scarce. To sum it up, 3 years ago I suffered a bad concussion that kept me out of work for nearly 6 months and took over a year to fully recover. I then finished my PhD, then taught horticulture/plant biology to undergrads at a local college for a year, and in May I started a new job the Dutch equivalent of the USDA, working as a scientist in vegetable seed health. The downside- my work is 100km from home, so I'm in the car a ridiculous amount of time every day I'm not a morning person, so I'm finding it really rough to get up at 5:30 in order to beat rush hour...

Bonus of my job- it houses the main diagnostics center in the country, so can have any diseased orchids tested for free, whenever I want. One colleague is eagerly awaiting samples of my diseased plants before I trash them.

That's enough for now, I hope I can pop in here on at least a weekly basis! (And share all the new orchids I'm ordering next week!)