Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Staging an Orchid for Kathie

Being a perfectionist has it's problems.

The other day I went around taking pictures to illustrate various things here on the blog and basically because I rather like photography.  At least what passes for photography, that is.

I had a shot of my Cattleya Orchid and this little Oncidium Orchid in the foreground.  Being a camera with an LCD screen in the back, there are certain tricks I can pull to make the picture better, but the vast majority of my pictures are of the variety of "Lets Take Them and Fix What We Can".  Find a subject and take a LOT of pictures and hopefully things will turn out right.  

Usually I get a good shot out of the various views, some are blurred, some with bad lighting, some focused on the wrong spot, but one out of the lot will turn out how I liked them.

In this case I got a really good picture of the rarest sort of Orchid of them all - The Antigravity Floating Oncidium Orchid.  Its natural habitat is under the eaves of a garden shed that resides in the back of yards all over the world.

Usually around five feet off the ground. 
Hovering. 
Next to the pool.

The reality was that I was looking for a spot on the sunny side of the shed that looked just like the original spot I had it.  Needing the shot in the morning doesn't help when the sun is on that side in the afternoon.

At any rate, this little beauty is a "Mini Oncidium Orchid".  The flower itself is about the size of a small fingernail, and the whole plant came in a pot that was about the size of a thimble for "Andre the Giant".  It was a gift from my Godmother Kathie back the last time we were together, and I saw it as a challenge to get the little thing to flower again.  Basically I stuck the root ball in with another orchid that is in the background and left it on the drip feed irrigation hoping something would happen with it.  

It's quite happy along the line in the back yard.

The trick with these plants is finding where they are happy.  Most of the plants I have in the yard in pots are foundlings.   After Christmas three years ago, I found a chewed up Poinsettia that was on its last leaves.  Placed into a pot in a semi shaded area, it took off to form a great big bush that did well for a couple years.   Now with the whitefly going after them, some of those are getting shabby looking and may not come back. 

The orchid, being a canary in the coal mine, is not one of them.

The moral of the story is, at least here in Florida, if it grows, it will do better under irrigation outside.

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