Is this cymbidium orchid drop-dead gorgeous, or what? I don't know anything about orchids, but I wanted this one! I came home with a much smaller, but almost as pretty phalaenopsis orchid that is supposed to be a good *beginner's* orchid. We'll see. I'm not very good at keeping flowering houseplants alive. The saleslady says that most people kill orchids with too much kindness and that I should only need to water it well once a week and provide dappled sunlight. Uh-huh. Wish me luck.
A visit to the local garden center always cheers me. Especially at this time of year when all of the cute bunny items seem to be everywhere. For the most part I restrain myself from buying any of it. This display of planters, birdhouses, and Easter nick-nacks was just so cheerful and fun. I love the giant Peter Rabbit peeking out from the back!
Not your ordinary garden center, this place has just about everything rela
ted to gardening, plus garden-themed housewares and a wonderful gourmet market. I miss the days before it became so popular, when it wasn't much more than a farmer's market run out of a large garage, with the owners selling locally grown vegetables and flowers. Their peach and apple orchard used to back up to our yard. Now we have soccer fields and a running track and they buy their produce elsewhere. They still grow raspberries and blackberries on part of the property and corn nearby. On summer mornings I will sometimes see old Mr. S. going by our house on his red tractor and he often stops to chat with me about the red-tailed hawks that nest in a huge pine tree on the edge of his fields. I'd guess he must be pretty amazed with how his family business has grown through the years.
The color in the greenhouses is so breathtaking on such a gray early-spring day that I wanted to bring it all home with me, but I behaved myself and only bought a few pots of purple pansies for the front steps and the little yellow orchid. And two bunches of delicious pink muscatel grapes and my favorite red pears. Yum! How many months till strawberries come in?
4 comments:
these photos are so delightfully refreshing and renewing on this dark, foggy day with alternating fog and snow flurries
Thanks
I bought a beautiful orchid three years ago. It hasn't bloomed since, though I have done everything I have read. Fertilized, re-potted, what have you. Pretty geen leaves, no flower :(
Snow flurries - yuck. We just have a bit of drizzle here.
Michelle: maybe you're being too kind to it? "grin" I don't have a clue, really. Maybe it needs more light?
Orchids scare me...I've never tried them.
And speaking of strawberries: We were all outside yesterday, and I saw that our non-producing strawberry patch is green and spreading. Maybe we'll get some berries this year...or, come to think of it, maybe the birds are getting them first. Hey!
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