Saturday, October 8, 2011

I went to Behnke's to judge the Chili Cookoff today, but the real news is that Karen won this cool metal flamingo




She really needed another one; there aren't more than 50 of 'em in the garden now, mostly plastic. And maybe a hundred more in the house. Apparently after she bought her own 10$ worth of tickets, both Stephanie and I added a few to raise the odds. One probably would have been enough; what's meant to be is meant to be. I only wish Ruth Dix could have been there.

(Behnke's is a fine nursery, Chili Peppers are plant material, and flamingos live in the garden....so this is a legitimate gardening post.)

Friday, October 7, 2011

NCOS Orchid Show and Sale this weekend (Sat. Sun. Mon.) at the Arboretum






It's hard to resist these guys. And hard to believe some of them. The Bulbophyllum echinolabium (next to bottom picture) almost got me. Maybe if it's still there tomorrow when I have weekend watering....

These crab spiders have been everywhere this fall

This one was/is? living in the window of Amy's vehicle. She drove it around all day!

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.

It was not National

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Ephphyllum anguliger flowering in Polyhouse 7


It's beautiful and it smells better than it looks. I had to shoot back to Polyhouse 7 this morning to check watering; repairs to the system required that all the water be shut off for a bit. All of the Asian plants were fine but I did get a chance to sell this epiphytic cactus.

It's Toadlily season in the Asian Collections we have many different taxa


This one's identified as hirta x formosana from an unknown source, but it's a nice one.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Muhlenbergia capillaris in the morning.....I guess you had to have been there

It was very impressive. It didn't really look like this but...

The weather seems to be back to normal, a state of affairs that we haven't seen a lot this year. While heat records have been falling daily in Great Britain, we've been setting records for low temperatures. Not low lows but low highs which is a suspect statistic if I ever heard one, but it was seriously cold, more like late November than early October. Anyway everything's okay today. The sun shone all day so we were all happy. It hasn't rained non-stop for 6 weeks, but let's just say nobody has had to water anything since some time in late August.

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Photos of the bark of Carpinus coreana, cordata, laxiflora, and turczaninovii




From the top: Carpinus coreana, C. cordata, C. laxiflora, and C. turczaninovii



These specimens are all now growing in the Asian Collections at the US National Arboretum. All were grown from seed wild collected in China, Korea, or Japan. All four have distinctive bark distinctly different from each other.