orphaned orchids

What a beautifully odd day!

But I wont start with that. My initial question for you is this-- now that you're older (and you are all older than you were a few years or decades ago), knowing what you know about your habits, fears, strengths and eccentricities, do you ever think about the job you may have been well suited for, but somehow never followed?

When I was twelve and had to fill in the first pages of my autograph book (remember those?), I wrote, in answer to the question -- what do you want to be when you grow up? -- reporter. I was thinking today how, in fact, maybe that's not altogether a bad insight. Possibly wrong, but possibly not so wrong after all, especially if I think expansively about the term.


Alright. Back to the order of the day. It began before breakfast, with the morning shower. I realized that my hair is getting too long. So I asked Ed, even though he had yet to study up on this new for him set of skills -- could you cut my hair please?






He did. I asked for an inch and a half, he took off three and then asked -- was that too much? 
No. Hair grows back. Nearly all that you mess up in life has some lasting effect on someone or something, but hair -- it grows back.


After breakfast (in the front room today!)...


 


...I went out to do my weekly grocery shopping and, too, I went to Orchids by the Ackers (a place that  -- you guessed it, sells orchids) to re-pot my very huge cymbidium. I'd been a visitor to this nursery for decades. Indeed, the orchids I was bringing in were originally from there and they had already been repotted by them once before, some years back.

I offered them the greater chunk of my cymbidium plants. They really bloom profusely come spring, but I'm not a strong fan of the flower. I don't want many pots of this same bloom: it has a brown and green edging. Quaint, but not as cheerful as, say, pink and yellow. But, the orchid growers declined. Indeed, they told me, they were moving away from selling cymbidium orchids altogether.

Why? Why?!? 
Because no one wants to buy them.

I imagine it has something to do with instant gratification. You wont have it with these plants. You need to do stuff before they bloom for you. Feed them, and more importantly, give them night after night of cold temps. But not really cold temps. Just like between 44 and 48 degrees f. Weeks on end of that.

And so what do I do? Instead of offloading my huge plants (or portions of them), I take home three of their own...






....knowing that I will never be buying cymbidium, or most likely any orchid from them again. First, foster chickens...



("is she talking about us?")





("no, me.")





("how could anyone say bad things about you, oreo?")


...now orchids. When will I learn?


Evening. We go to our local farmers market. I have to say, given the temperatures, the wetness, the lack of crowds, I think all vendors will be glad when the outdoor markets are done for the year (next week).





At home, I scramble cheeper eggs. The hens are all laying again, though with less enthusiasm and less regularity. It's as if they, too, really want the break that winter affords.