Plant update - the oncidium ‘Shary Baby’ orchids have gone insane with four spikes of opened flowers and one spike of unopened buds. These smell amazing, like vanilla. Then with the African violets, a young plant of one of my favorite trailers, ‘Rob’s Gundaroo,’ has started blooming and it’s only like 6 months old. I doubt it’s going to stop anytime soon; the other one I had was a continuous bloomer. Then a few months ago I joined an African violet leaf trading group on FB and exchanged a few leaves of rare varieties with people for the cost of shipping. I stuck most of them in soil and today I finally noticed a baby leaf of the Russian variety ‘RS Zimney Tsvetok,” English name ‘Winter Snow.’ The screenshot is what this variety will look like in bloom. Super excited for the other cuttings to start sending out leaves too. I checked them and they are rooted, but it’s just going a little slow maybe because of the change in environment from the move. Finally my paphiopedilum orchid is sending out new growths from the crown which will become new crowns.

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To look forward to - Oncidium ‘Wildcat Rainbow’ with one GIANT 3ft flower spike, and two Oncidium ‘Sharry Babies’ with 2 more modest flower spikes each. The ‘Sharry Babey’ Oncidiums are supposed to smell amazing. I’m finally closing on the co-op this Friday (what a freaking slow process it was to purchase it - never again will I get a co-op), so I hope these spikes will not get damaged during the move.

Good news for my Odorous Princess 'Tainstar', I decided to check it today (more like just now) to see if it needed water since I haven't watered it since my last post about it. I think my pot needs more air holes since the bottom 30-40% of the pot always has condensation in it and I don't believe it dries out very well despite using large super chunky hunks of bark for aeration, but that's besides the point. Anyways I found some new growths starting and even some new roots if you can tell in the 2nd pic. The root system was not too bad to begin with so I'm not sure how it ended up getting so dehydrated but now that I see it's growing well I feel a little relieved although I'll be fully relieved once I see all these pseudobulbs plump back up.

There are 5 new spikes. I have found Oncidium intergenerics to bloom freely in NE Ohio. The cloudy short days of winter make orchid growing a challenge. Our sunny days are usually amplified by the thick snow. I never shovel the deck off the sunroom just to have this effect for the sunroom.