Orchid porn with fuzzy interloper

My son continues to worry about my preoccupation with orchid progress. When he temporarily broke my camera (by playing a catchy rhythm on the on/off button while it was hooked up to a computer trying to interface), he told his friend "he like his camera better than me and the only thing he likes better than his camera is taking picture of his orchids, and I just ruined that!" Having solved the camera issue (it just needed to reboot), here are recent bud updates.

Both Phalaenopsis (moth) orchids are budding, the result of pruning the stalks from the last flowers and getting the flowers to try again. The one on the left has one stalk and the one on the right has two. This happens very slowly and the buds and stalks are very waxy.

The bud on the right just opened last night. As you can see, it's working on a second and third bloom. I'm watering and fertilizing attentively, not wanting to oversaturate or starve the fella.

This set of buds is from the showier phalaenopsis. There is a good growth tip on the end of this stalk and I suspect it'll be busy for a while once it goes. The first bud is about to pop and I suspect it may go today.

Growth at the tip of the stalk.

Okay, I know I have created adequate suspense. . . .

Voila! The first orchid of our new season. He just opened last night and will likely expand a little more with the petals pushed back and the center pushed out, in a display that would make Georgia O'Keefe proud! I think she was actually more into hybiscus, but whatever. . . .

And the reason I'm so into orchids, other than that they compliment my obsessive nature?

Winter. This scene unfolds right out our suburban front window. This rabbit has taken up residence under the forsythia bush and helps himself to any birdseed that might fall his way. I think this fella would be an orchid fan given half a chance. He'll be after my garden in no time, but these days he's heavily into birds.

Fun Fair

I just love this picture. I took it the evening we took three year old Caitlin to the Regina Fall Fun Fest. It rained all day and she was mad because we promised we would take her. The rain stopped and we packed up infant Walker and finally went. Caitlin was scared of the big ride, bigger than the little cars that go in a circle, with big airplanes and propellers that went around with the wind.

Thirteen years and three months later, I picked Caitlin up at the Fareway after her second night as a checkout person. She was talking a mile a minute. She was supposed to have Casey watching her while she worked since it was her second day. Casey went back for a little while for some reason and while she was gone a girl came up and asked to buy cigarettes.

Someone said "Be sure and card her!" Caitlin asked for an i.d. The girl smiled and handed over her driver's license. Caitlin did the math.

"I'm sorry, I can't sell you these," Caitlin told her, and put the cigarettes back. The girl smiled and left.

Pretty soon a man came in and approached Caitlin. He asked if she had just refused to sell cigarettes to a girl, and Caitlin replied that she had. The man told her that she was making his job easier and introduced himself as part of a security operation "blah, blah, blah," Caitlin said. All she knew was that on her second day she got "stung" and that she had just avoided a $500.00 fine for selling cigarettes to minors. She confided that it was a good thing Megan told her to card the girl, because there's a lot to think about when you're learning to check out. I personally still don't know how to check out.

There are a bunch of sappy songs about daughters growing up and how fast it goes. One minute you're at the Fun Fest and the next she's necking on your sofa with a boy from Mt. Vernon. Paul Cunliffe, former bandmate has a very classy daughter who is now in her late 20's, I think. When Caitlin was little he told me:

"You never know when that last push on the swing is going to come."

Schwann's Update: There is an apartment complex on the campus of the agency where I work, for families of recovering addicts and chemical dependent people. I know I have reported on this blog about the Schwann's conspiracy, involving suburban housewives and serial cannabalism. Well, I saw a Schwann's truck pulling into the complex for formerly chemically dependent people! Now I am concerned that Schwann's is brancing out into other socioeconomic classes, the underpriveleged, and the non-suburban. I have heard that Schwann's is coming out with a line of frozen soul food entrees. They are delivering menudo in Hispanic neighborhoods. They're all disappearing, the former meth moms, the mamacitas, the tired laundromat mothers in smocks! Their puzzled husbands abandoned in their Lazy-Boys, hollering for beer, wondering vaguely, "Where did she say she was going?" He comes to the door offering free samples, wearing that smart uniform, talking about "easy and nutritious" but these women don't understand. He's talking about THEM!!

Don't say I didn't warn you.

Remembering a summer night

On summer nights we went out front and lit sparklers off glowing punk sticks jammed into buckets of sand the Tucker's Grandma prepared. It was hot and sticky and the cicadas were sawing away in unison from the elms that lined our streets then, before the Dutch Elm Disease killed them all.



We stayed up late and enjoyed the dry, cool breeze that finally blew across the porch and wrote our names in the dark with our sparkling wands. It was a little dangerous, playing with fire, and we burned our fingers sometimes, and our bare knees, but we didn't care. We were up late, no school, and our parents were up the street having a beer on the porch. We didn't have to be anywhere. I suppose some of the neighbors probably wished we would go in and be quiet but they never said anything.



It's snowing again and I'm smelling sweat and punk and dry grass. Memory is a wonderful thing. These are pictures of Walker carrying on the summer tradition last July.

My camera is again on the fritz. Walker and a friend used it last, and so I interrogated him. They were editing video they'd shot with it. Walker said he pressed the on button repeatedly to get it to beep in a funny rhythm while it was hooked up, synching with the computer. Now the camera thinks it's still hooked up to something and ignores all commands. It's off, in a box, to Canon, since it's under warranty, and I did not mention Walker's funny rhythm to the person at the store. We'll see. I really wanted to take some more pictures of the orchid budding.

Sigh.