Iwanagara Apple Blossom

One of my very favorites.

The blossoms seem to float.  The pale pink/purple, cream, yellow, fade into each other. The fragrance is strong, sweet. I've had this plant for eight years and it's bloomed every one of them. Couldn't decide which picture to publish, so I picked three.







Brassovola Nodosa

The Brassovola blooms every Christmas. I love it for its white petal-like blossoms and graceful habit, but just as much for the amazing fragrance that comes out only at night.
 

Paphiopedilum Spicerianum

A small but exquisite Paph that looked pretty inconsequential by itself, so I put it next to a Cerissa Bonsai, giving it some context.

Miltonia Vexillaria "Arctic Moon" AM/AOS



A pride and joy.  It gets an additional shoot every year and the fragrance, which emanates from the bloom every couple of hours or so, is citrusy and spicy, strong enough to fill the whole room.

Potinara Cloud's Creek

Three blooms this time! 

Phalaenopsis Ellie

A lovely pastel,a gift from my neighbor Ellie, seems to contain the essence of Spring.











 

Dendrobium Nobile

Isn't this a beauty?  I just bought it at Little Brook Orchids, here in Lancaster.  It's 16" high and apparently never gets any higher, just blooms vertically along the main stems.  The color is called a "blush."  Very fitting, I think.  

Dendrobium unknown hybrid

   


This Dendrobium came with the name "Rosy Pink."  When it bloomed, I saw the most gorgeous purple of all my plants.  I can never get the actual shade with my camera, no matter how many times I try.  But this one comes close.  The one below,   

taken in my living room, is the truest.

Paphiopedilum Bulldog

These orchids are called "Bulldogs" for some reason.  Imposing and grand, they deserve a more important name.  I have a harder time getting them to bloom than any of the others.    In the fall they have to have night temperatures of 50 degrees or a little lower, then moved inside to at least 20 degrees higher during the day.  If you want to try one, keep it moist, watering every 3-4 days.  Direct sun not necessary, but plenty of light is.   Lots of luck!

Phalaenopsis Chain Xen "Ming Ho"

This is the best-performing orchid I've ever had. I bought it in 2008 and it's been blooming ever since-- AND adding shoots.  The blooms last for six months or more and by the time they fall, new buds are beginning to form on a new stem.

Iwanagara Apple Blossom "Snow Flake"

 

" And for all this, nature is never spent;

  There lives the dearest freshness

  Deep down things;"

  Gerard Manley Hopkins

Wild and Tamed

Here's a wild Lady Slipper orchid that my nephew, John Kodjak, spotted when he was hiking in Keene, NY, in the Adirondacks.


Below, is the cultivated variety, now called Paphiopedilum,
"Bunny Slippers."

They have the same delicate coloring and the same pouchy form. One can be found in greenhouses, but the other,only in the deep dark woods.

Potinara Cloud's Creek

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A Potinara from Carter and Holmes.  It arrived in a tiny pot, 3 leaves sticking out in 3 different directions.  Not very likely, I thought.  Then, this morning, months later, with very little notice, this huge, gorgeous bloom appeared.  And the fragrance is strong, sweet, ....indescribable.

Phalaenopsis Unknown Hybrid

"When I was but thirteen or so

I went into a golden land,

Chimborazo, Cotopaxi,

Took me by the hand."




W.T. Turner, "Romance"










""W




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Phalaenopsis Unknown hybrid



The Dream Keeper



Bring me all of your dreams,

You dreamers,

Bring me all of your

Heart melodies

That I may wrap them

In a blue cloud-cloth

Away from the too-rough fingers

Of the world.











Langston Hughes

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"This is Proteus, a god.  He comes

from the ocean

Sometimes, at hot noon, and

 crosses the beach

Looking for inland shade."








Rolphe Humphries  "Proteus, or the Shapes of Conscience"

Cattleytonia "Why Not"

"The  day came slow, till five

 o'clock,

Then sprang before the hills

Like hindered rubies, or the light

A sudden musket spills."







Emily Dickinson,  "The day came slow"

Paphiopedilum Suzie Dell x (world Exile & Jacandelol)

"THE WORLD IS CHARGED


WITH THE


GRANDEUR OF GOD"









Gerard Manley Hopkins  "God's Grandeur"

Bletia "Golden Glory"



"Light steals in among us like an enemy,

fingering its narrow way

through the lattices..."





Geraldine Brooks         People of the Book

Oncidium Mendenhall "Hildos"



"Eternal Aphrodite, 

rainbow-crowned,

you cunning, wily, child of
Zeus

I beg you

do not break me, Lady,

with the pain    of 
misled
love."




Sappho, 625-570  B. C.

Vanda, " Robert's Delight"

Aster

"You were the Morning Star

among

The Living:

But now in Death your evening

Lights the Dead."


Plato    (c.427-347 B.C.)

Phalaenopsis unknown hybrid



"There was a time when meadow,

grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness

of a dream."                         



William Wordsworth

Miltonia Xenia's Cove

"Sing we for love and

idleness,

Naught else is worth

the having."

• Ezra Pound

Phalaenopsis Unknown hybrid

Fire and Ice


Some say the world will end in fire

Some say in ice.

From what I've tasted of desire

I hold with those who favor fire.

But if I had to perish twice,

I think I know enough of hate

To know that for destruction ice

Is also great

And would suffice.






Robert Frost

Brassavola Nodosa

"Of asphodel,

that greeny

flower, 

like a buttercup

upon its
branching stem---

I come,
my sweet,

to sing to you"




William Carlos Williams

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"Light thickens, and the crow

Makes wing to th'  rooky wood.

Good things of day begin to droop and drowse,

Whiles night's black agents to their preys

Do rouse."



William Shakespeare,  "Macbeth"

Dendrobium Salaya Minist

"I am moved by fancies

that are curled

Around these images and cling;


The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing."



T.S. Eliot

Laeliocattleya Apple Blossom

"When as in silks my


Julia goes,


Then, then (me thinks)


how sweetly flows,


that liquefaction of her


clothes."






Robert Herrick




Dendrobium Roy Tokunaga



"Such floods of white

 came bursting through

 the clouds. So the wind

 threw its contorted

strength around the sky."



Wallace Stevens

Dendrobium, unknown hybrid



"So vast, our Goddess Night, she

rises,

star-eyes gazing everywhere;

all her finery of dress

displayed."





Sappho,      ca. 625-570  BC