Just Another Day In Orchidville ..

Now that I look back on this photo of Pepper with a new grocery store Orchid, I think that he doesn't look entirely pleased with me. Maybe even a "Come on Dad" sort of look. Well, all good memories for me either way. I miss having him around. He was ALWAYS such a good sport about taking these sort of photos. I would say "Stay", and he would. Molly, on the other hand, runs or turns around. Can't blame her much though.

But.. Let's get to todays Orchid Update!

Our Dendrobium Orchid..

She Is Doing Quite Fine ..

When we brought her home, roughly 9 or 10 months ago, I repotted her into a larger terracotta pot. It originally came in a plastic pot and was falling over every other day. The Orchid farm where we purchased her recommended we stick to a tight terracotta pot. So that's what I did.

It has really grown nicely into it's new pot and it's location in our home.

Her she is and all of her stems! I put my arm into the picture for some size reference. The one I am pointing to is the newest stem. Since we have owned this Dendrobium, there have been 3 new stems.

In this picture, you'll see all of the roots beginning to circle around the inside of the pot. I'll have to take this Orchid out, at some point, and clean it up so that it doesn't become root bound.

Well, Well, Well... What do we have here???

Another New Stem!!!

This new stem will grow fairly rapidly. It only took about 45 days for that last stem to grow to the length it now is.

Stems don't last forever ..

Eventually, and after the stem buds, fully grows, leaves out, leaves fall, blooms appear, blooms drop off.. the stem will remain green for a long while then turns yellow and dies off. Wow. Sounds sort of bleak now that I write that all out. Sadly it is the truth.

Below is a stem that has already flowered (right) and a stem that is on it's death bed (left).

This is a stem that has flowered and then the flowers were cut off after they wilted away. Each bloom only flowers once, but at least they last a looooong time.

Now For The Good News!

Eventually the stems grow to maturity and leaf out like this one..

Those leaves will nourish the plant, then eventually turn brown and have to be cut off (they are very hard to just pull off and may never really just fall off). But then the exciting part arrives! (that was sarcasm) We wait.

We will wait ..

For the next flower bud to form and hopefully give us some amazing, beautiful flowers! The Dendrobium Orchid is not what I would consider a prolific bloomer. In fact she will only produce blooms twice per year, if I am lucky. That's it. Maybe twice. but when she does bloom, they hang around for an awful long time. Months!

This is a photo of an up and coming flower bud. If you look close (I marked it with a black arrow) you'll see a tiny bud forming at the tip of that stem.

Only a handful of flowers will appear for this particular Dendrobium Orchid. Their awesome though. It's been a while since it bloomed last, but I found a few pictures of them with Molly. Obviously she was NOT happy with me. We had just brought this home and I wanted to share in my excitement.. She had other thoughts. Like "Get that dang thing away from me!!"

Okay, so Molly doesn't give a hoot, but that doesn't mean my wife and I are not excited for the possibility of new flowers. Yes we are, and we can't wait. If you refer back to the photo at the beginning of this post, you'll see that there are roughly 6 to 8 stems with foliage. This is exciting because that means we have about 6 to 8 chances of seeing some blooms in the future.

Come on Dendrobium..

Show me some Love!

“Patience, grasshopper," said Maia. "Good things come to those who wait."
"I always thought that was 'Good things come to those who do the wave,'" said Simon. "No wonder I've been so confused all my life.”
― Cassandra Clare, City of Glass

Thank you for swinging by my blog and checking out the post. Have a great day!

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