Saturday, March 22, 2014

Pretty pictures: Paphiopedilum Bit-O'-Sunshine x Paph. William Sanders x Paph. malipoense

Since my last post, there's been a family event (death in the family on the husband's side). It would be complicated to explain, but the upshot is that although it's not a big emotional crisis for anybody involved, for the first time since 2006, I'm sleeping by myself, and all alone in the house,1,2 and everything is now all upside down and backwards.

So either I'm going to wind up writing lots of blog posts out of boredom, or I'm going to be writing no blog posts at all because I'm trying to clean the house top to bottom. Physical stuff seems more distracting than verbal stuff right now, so the smart money is on cleaning / no blog.

In the meantime, here is a new orchid for you to look at, and I will be back when I can.



All I have on this one from the tag is "Paphiopedilum Bit-O'-Sunshine x Paphiopedilum William Sanders x Paphiopedilum malipoense". That could be

(Paph. Bit-O'-Sunshine x Paph. William Sanders) x Paph. malipoense,

or it could be

Paph. Bit-O'-Sunshine x (Paph. William Sanders x Paph. malipoense).

It looks like the tag is trying to suggest the first option, so that would be my guess, but parentheses would have helped clarify.

-

1 (save for Sheba, who tries, but is not a great conversationalist. She's really more of a listener than a talker, and honestly, she's not even that great of a listener sometimes. It depends on how often I'm saying "Sheba.")
2 I would have gone with the husband, but you would be surprised how difficult it is to find someone to plant-sit 1000+ plants for a week on short notice, and many of the Anthurium seedlings in the basement wouldn't be able to survive a week without watering. To say nothing of trying to find someone to take care of Sheba. Maybe if we'd had more time to figure something out, I could have gone, but it was all pretty abrupt.


2 comments:

Liza said...

Hey, mr_s, I'm sorry for your husband's loss. That's a bummer.

I guess you won't be arguing with the mayor about who's the most plantastic in town this weekend. (Too soon?)

I understand what it's like to be "trapped" by the plants, or at least feeling like you can't go anywhere because of them. That's been one of the trickiest parts of my plant business, especially back in the day. I couldn't take vacations because who would take care of the plants? I ended up working it so I could take partial vacations (Thursday through Sunday, for example) instead of a whole week. To this day, I still can't do a week's leave without hiring someone. So I get it.

And because I understand, I feel compelled to urge you to do what you can to break out of that cycle. Put seedlings on irrigation or find an intern or something. I know, easier said than done. But keep trying, because vacations are important. And being able to get away for family events is important, too. I know you already know that. I just wanted you to know that you're not the only one, and that you've got support. (Which isn't as good as living in the same town and offering actual support, but it's all I got!)

Good luck, and hang in there. I vote for cleaning the whole house. It's therapeutic and a nice surprise for the husband.

p.s. Lowe's and Home Depot put those paint cards out specifically for you to take with you. It's not stealing. But if you want to use that as justification for buying an Anthurium, that's fine by me.

Anonymous said...

You might want to consider transitioning some of you plants to hydroculture to make watering a little less of a time drain.
I have used Plowing Through Life's method to transfer some plants to hydroculture. It works well and if you top off all the water reservoirs before you go you can relax for a few days at least!