I was new to orchids.  I didn’t want to buy huge flowering plants that I couldn’t maintain.  And I felt that if I bought them in flower, as so many orchid advisors suggest, I would mostly watch the flowers fade and die, which struck me as sad.  Many of the vendors have out-of-bloom plants with photographs posted to show you the blossom to come, and they are all very good about tagging the individual plants with their full names.  The only trap I saw with the photos was that sometimes their 2” square image of a beautiful white flower was an enlargement, and sometimes it was actually smaller than what you’d get.  But again, if you are conscientious about checking the tags, the info is usually easy to find.


The plants I brought home  pretty much looked like this, though there were a few more of them.
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I also bought this useful book.

It didn’t take long to realize that I have no idea how to relate the foot-candle light requirements to the conditions in my house.  For some of them, direct eastern-window sunlight caused yellowing and leaves dropped.  For others, it was not an issue.  They seemed happy.   I read on and found that I should repot directly after  they bloom, which gave me a little time to learn how.  But another advisor said to repot as soon after purchase as possible, lest they drown in the extra tightly packed moss some growers use for transport.  Eventually I found my way to this website, which has really good advice, as well as supplies.  What seemed a ridiculously complex set of rules and rituals gave way to simple pleasure though, because, miraculously, they began to bloom.
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I've been a gardener ever since the first geranium bloom I liberated from someone's front step set roots into the glass of water on my windowsill.  Roots are beautiful, and new life springing from a cut flower is a profound and exciting mystery.  Most of my gardening has been earth-based, at first in containers, and then, especially when we settled in California, in the ground.
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A few years ago I noticed huge and beautiful orchid arrangements at my dad's house.  There was something ethereal about them which called to me differently from all the "normal" flowers I've learned to grow.  And a visit to Fiji, where so many orchids grow happily out of doors, inflamed my curiosity. 

So I responded to the call by attending the Pacific Orchid Expo in San Francisco this year.  

It's a sweet show.  People are happy among the flowers.  I figured out that I have strong opinions about them, disliking the ones with monkey faces and skull imagery, as well as finding flesh colors kind of uncanny-valley creepy.  But also that some are just fascinating and lovely.  And I took the chance to bring home all orchids that were not in bloom, choosing little ones I can nurture along.

I've been wondering about the quizzes.  Every time I take a tentative pass near the orbital range of Facebook, I see another quiz, another  post from a friend who is  excited to share which mystical creature is hidden inside her, who his evil twin is, what 70s movie star she should date.  Each one asks some set of questions in which we are supposed to rank preferences, tastes, associations, sometimes knowledge. Often this involves making ethical choices.  Often one or more questions appear really off topic.

How comprehensive a portrait of each of us could be assembled by anyone with access to all our answers?  If you were trying to keep tabs on the general populace of... someplace... can you think of a better first step than getting them all to participate in self-profiling for fun? Of course you'd have to control for trolling and playful answers, but I bet that could be managed.   And then used for what?  Marketing purposes (bread), or political crowd control (circuses)?  I'm not paranoid enough to believe this is actually going on, just cautious enough about privacy and information issues to mark it with a ?

Full Disclosure: I am Ziggy Stardust Bowie.

I use computers for prose, pen and ink for poetry.  

I remember that when I was first writing sonnets after years of only working in free verse I was shocked to discover that the form had the power to impose its world view on my thoughts.  It was the first experience I'd had with the medium determining, or at least influencing, the message.  I'm having that sensation again very strongly as I grope around for what material to include on this site, and find the site building tools have their own ideas.  Not bad ideas, necessarily, but decided ones.  

This is just to say I hope most of my serious thinking will go into stories.  I don't know what will turn up here.