HALLIE EPHRON: Last week I posted this picture on Facebook--two of my orchid plants in bloom.
So far I’ve gotten more than 700 tapbacks and nearly 100 comments, including one from my idol, Sara Paretsky, who’s an orchid fan, too.
Others commented, asking what’s the trick to getting an orchid plant to bloom. Because that’s the thing about orchids, you buy them in bloom, and if you’re lucky they keep right on blooming for a few months. Then the blossoms fall off, you cut the flower stems and, but for a few strappy leaves, the plant goes dormant.
For months and on into years sometimes, that’s the whole show.
I have no brilliant advice for getting an orchid to bloom, other than HAVE PATIENCE and DON’T OVERWATER and GIVE IT INDIRECT LIGHT.
Watch for scale … and when you find one (or several) of those pesky creatures, swab them away with alcohol or pick them off with your fingernails. And I've read that one should occasionally (though I’m not sure how often) repot in fresh soil.
And still your orchid plant may reward you by lying there looking blah for months on end.
Which is what my pink one did. For four years.
Jerry bought it for $4 at a yard sale. At the time, it was spectacularly in bloom. Two flower shafts. Looked amazing for a couple of months. Then nothing. Year in, year out, nothing but an occasional leave.
Then SHAZAM: it’s blooming and it even has a a second flower stem.
I know, this is WHAT WE’RE WRITING WEEK again on Jungle Red, and I am actually talking about writing. Because my favorite comment from my Facebook orchid picture posting came from Louise Hillery (Thanks, Louise!). Responding to the fact that it took 4 years to produce anything, she wrote:
So true. Because I am writing again. Little by little, characters are taking shape--four women. A townhouse for them to hang out in. A puzzling set of circumstances that are still knotted up in my head.
I considered putting orchids in the book, but Rex Stout set the bar too high with his orchid fancier, Nero Wolfe. (The fictional Wolfe started on orchids with a plant given to him by the wife of a man he had cleared on a murder rap. He and his gardener tend them on the roof of his brownstone.)
In Stout’s obituary in the NY Times, he’s quoted as saying: “The plots come when I’m shaving, watering the plants, puttering around.” It also says that for the most part, however, Stout's wife was in charge of watering his 300 houseplants. Gotta wonder how many of them were orchids.
I have fewer than twenty plants. Among them are three orchids. I take that deep pink orchid, spectacularly in bloom after a four-year wait, as a sign of encouragement.
I know, this is WHAT WE’RE WRITING WEEK again on Jungle Red, and I am actually talking about writing. Because my favorite comment from my Facebook orchid picture posting came from Louise Hillery (Thanks, Louise!). Responding to the fact that it took 4 years to produce anything, she wrote:
Just like a writer's Work-in-Progress!
So true. Because I am writing again. Little by little, characters are taking shape--four women. A townhouse for them to hang out in. A puzzling set of circumstances that are still knotted up in my head.
I considered putting orchids in the book, but Rex Stout set the bar too high with his orchid fancier, Nero Wolfe. (The fictional Wolfe started on orchids with a plant given to him by the wife of a man he had cleared on a murder rap. He and his gardener tend them on the roof of his brownstone.)
In Stout’s obituary in the NY Times, he’s quoted as saying: “The plots come when I’m shaving, watering the plants, puttering around.” It also says that for the most part, however, Stout's wife was in charge of watering his 300 houseplants. Gotta wonder how many of them were orchids.
I have fewer than twenty plants. Among them are three orchids. I take that deep pink orchid, spectacularly in bloom after a four-year wait, as a sign of encouragement.
Like a manuscript, it’s taken its own good time.
What about you? What are the things in your life that you've learned are worth the wait?
