My indoor Phalaenopsis orchid garden, my amazing nature

Saturday, 14th of January 2023 [28]

Ups, I wanted to type 2013! Which btw wouldn’t be wrong, because 2013 was exactly the year I received my first orchid as a birthday gift. Truth me told, I gave it little attention. It was cute, of course and lasted longer than cut flowers, but back in a day I always thought orchids only flower once and then you throw them away.

Imagine my surprise when it decided to bloom again in January 2015!!!

I just moved to my new house 9 months earlier and I took the orchid with me only because it had a pretty pot. I thought it would look nice as a decoration, despite the orchid inside only having a few leaves. I go through periods of being very interested in plants to barely acknowledging their existence. The former has lasted since this orchid bloomed, so I guess my love for them is here to stay this time.

Not only has it bloomed, but it grew 2 spikes decorated with many flowers and it continued to bloom new spikes while the old ones were on its way out. It did this for 1 year and 4 months - constant blooming 😍

Here she is in 2016. Happy like a pig in shit like my boss would say. Considering that back then I had no idea of how to care for orchids, she was doing really well. She blessed me with flowers every year, until around 2018 when I attempted to repot her into huge wet pot in the middle of the winter - that’s when she finally gave up and died. She helped me fall in love with #amazingnature again and endured much abuse during my learning curve.

Before she died… (5 years later) she sparked my love for orchids. I was in on a secret - orchids don’t die after flowering once in their life 🙈! That’s how orchids became MY AMAZING NATURE. Below ⬇️ you can see what happened next:

I’d pick up all the orchids I could find on sale shelves, which were past flowering and nurture them back to live. The pink one below was once my partner in my first silent weekend that I practiced in 2015. I turned off all my devices and it was just me, my garden and my inside orchid garden, which wasn’t too big back then.

I remember I developed a special bond with that bright pink orchid that weekend and on Monday morning, before leaving for work I looked at her again and thought how beautiful she was… how she was my mirror and therefore that made me beautiful too. A little lightbulb 💡 moment.

Next is my orange orchid… you heard it right, I purchased it as orange, according to dried up flowers that were still attached when I bought it. A few months later I was in for a surprise - my orchid magically changed from orange to white! That’s before I knew that some orchids are injected with food dye to change their colours.

In March 2016 both were snuggled together on my bedroom windowsill. White one couldn’t hold it in and bursted with 2 branches of flowers, while pink one was keeping it cool.

She opened up her flowers in May - my birthday month. A perfect birthday gift from #MyAmazingNature 💙

I did subject my orchids to many experiments in those years of my obsession with them. I grew them in glass vase for example.

Somehow they didn’t mind and even gave me more blooms, as if all they every wanted was my love and attention. Surprise, surprise! Watering them properly in that vase was really tricky though, so apart from my mini Vanda orchid, there are no more glass grown orchids in my place.

Next up is my purple branching orchid. This picture of her is from January 2016 and in January 2023 she’s still with me and she’s about to bloom again in a few weeks. She traveled with me from UK to NL, where we lived for 1.5 years and then back to UK. One would think it could kill a plant, but this one just grew more roots 😅

I love how organised I used to be with my orchid pictures. I have an ‘orchid’ folder in my old phone with around 1.5k pictures of them. Seeing how this orchid looked 7 years ago is interesting. She has all her roots fitting into a tiny pot.

And now? She’s a bundle of roots! I tried to fit her roots back into the pot once or twice, but she insist on dangling them around. So I let her. At least I will never overwater this one, cause I mainly just spray the roots. With so many of them a few sprays is like a huge drink of water. Works for both of us 😉

And just one more to finish it off. Another one of my prolific bloomers. She also went with me to NL and back, bloomed her life out and give birth to at least 7 babies, that went to 4 different houses before she died. One amazing suicidal orchid that I already mentioned once here. You can also find a better capture of the roots of my branching Phal there.

That will be it for today. This is my entry to Amazing Nature contest (free topic) announced here.

Until next time 💙