Friday, October 7, 2011

It was not National Bring Your Orchid to Work Week

I bought this Psychopsis four years ago at the annual National Capitol Orchid Society show/sale. It flowered on the same spike, as they do, for....well, it stopped about 3 months ago. It just popped out a new flower every three or four weeks. That's more than three and a half years. Wow. I'm donating to the Arboretum today. According to my calculations, that means that if I see an orchid I'd like at the sale it'd be okay to buy it.

Things have changed over the past four years. I remember spending 600 dollars at that show. The Psychopsis cost, how do I remember this?, 55 dollars. I got my money's worth. We don't spend money like that anymore for all kinds of reasons. Property values dropped so our empire doesn't have the value it once did. Our income, knock on wood, has gone up a bit but buying stuff just isn't the same anymore. That's probably a good thing. Oh, yeah, over half of that money was spent with a vendor who sells orchid embroidered shirts, linens, etc. so much of the total went for holiday presents. Still that leaves a few hundred dollars of plants. Nowadays we buy orchids in Florida, use them as cut flowers while we're there, and bring them back. If we're driving.

2 comments:

Nic said...

Cool plant. Does it really routinely flower that steadily? Or are you just extremely good with orchids? Phalaenopsis hybrids, Dendrobium phalaenopsis cultivars and Pleione species have so far been the only reliable bloomers for me...

ChrisU said...

That's what it does. I'm definitely not that good with orchids! I have figured out that there are some orchids that can accept the conditions I can give them and i try to stay with those. I did buy two Bulbophyllums today; we'll have to see how that goes.