gusseting

the main advice that i can give was that i took a week off work and went on a yoga retreat beforehand, and dosed up bigtime on vitamin c. end result – fast healing, minimal pain, and back to normal pronto.

it’s official orchid season (if there’s such a thing…) in australia – cymbidiums are out in bloom, and my little supermarket baby is looking good – 3 flower spikes on the way. today was orchid porn day – the victorian international orchid fair was on – what made it international is beyond us (although there was a guy there who’d flown in to sell from adelaide, and the organisers are from sydney…hmmm…). haul = paph ho chi minh: (search at: http://slipperorchid.org/), a large division of phrag schroederae: http://www.orchidsonline.com.au/species1813.html .

spotted a guy checking out the teeniest orchid plants – hideous at growing orchids, yes, but picking the orchid nerds is easy – find the people who are choosing the small, unflowered varieties purely by name. what was he buying? oh…just a couple of things – this, and that… (scientific names inserted…) did i grow them?

tell story of growing and killing three, and get his story back – the little orchid in front of us was one of the first that he ever bought – he’d had and flowered it for over 2 years, and killed it due to naughty flatmates not watering while he was on holiday for over a month. it’s a great beginner orchid, and easy to grow though…

so, dear reader, count us the proud owner of one of the teeniest orchids we’ve ever seen: sophronities coccinea (story on miniatures with the pic at the bottom) : http://www.rhs.org.uk/learning/publications/orchidreview/orchid0904/miniature.asp. (also on flickr in native habitat: http://static.flickr.com/13/93286124_bc12013e3d.jpg?v=0 )
all that needs to be done now is keeping the things alive and coaxing them into flower…c’mon little fella…

it’s not quite over yet – but the offer made has been accepted – so now it’s just a matter of waiting, get the legals done, check out the place again (2 br 2nd story apartment) and look forward to getting into copious debt. it’s tenanted – so they’re staying until the end of this year or early next.
i learnt a lot about real estate agents and trusting myself.