Back home with some new plants
Maura and I have been back home from our October in Maine for 3 weeks now and I'm sill not unpacked yet. I receive some new babies shortly after getting home. I shouldn't have posted this until I have postable photo's to go with it, but I needed to say hello. I got a baby Magdelina, about 3 years away from blooming size (very cute, like an infant sesquadedelia), a massive neofinetia falcata (this thing is huge. A veriagated neofinetia falcata that I will report the full name of when I post pics, and a few others I can't name right now.
We visited some fine nurseries up and down the Eastern seaboard, got some good material and it arrived in amazingly good shape. I promise to follow up with this with a post with good photo's.
The biggest negative of the trip was when we got home and the lady with the $200,000 victorian green house (immediate past president of the Atlanta Orchid Society) gives us back our orchids and they are in horrible shape, many of which have had to have been thrown away. She volunteered to take them to her green house and we thought "how nice". All of my orchids are in fine shape, looking like they have been to an orchid spa, but Maura's you honestly wouldn't believe. Her AOS prize winning Royal Robe was left with 3 spikes and as healthy as could be. When we got it home it was on it's last leg. It has been airlifted to a nursery where it will (might) be revived along with several more of her prize winners.
We've thrown away many and she has worked tirelessly to save the remainder. For days now Maura has had the living room floor covered with water, chemical mixes, insecticides, fungicides, you name it - all to try to save the bulk of her flowers from not being watered to having been sprayed with killer pesticides'
The worst part is that as much as we do not want to think so, it appears this woman tried to kill her orchid purposefully. We are not the kind of people who would ordinarily even consider this, but this devastation in such a short period of time couldn't have happened if we had watered well and left them alone for the month. I can not describe the level of devastation - cut off new growth for one thing, and would be should that be all.
The worst consequence of the entire experience is that is has caused Maura not enjoy her orchids and it feels like forced work to her now. She is run down and very low and has no excitement for her collection now. Heartbreaking I tell you.
We are relatively new to the Atlanta orchid Society and she has won several monthly ribbons, many for first place and then won an HCC/AOS on her second try. We joked around that some of the older members might feel like we didn't deserve that or be resentful - but we were joking around. Well, I really hate to say this, but have tp be honest, it appears that the past president of the society is just that petty. She is the official AOS photographer as well and she really messed up Maura's prize winning photos that will be placed in AQ Plus and appear in the AOS publication. She still hasn't turned in the photo's and it's been since early September when she won. All the other photo's have been turned ion.
Sorry to post such a "down" post as we like to find the likable things in everyone, even those that appear to have no redeeming characteristics - they nearly always do. This woman has appeared to have acted maliciously, and hatefully at best and I hate feeling this way about her.
We will both get over it and move on and loose our resentment toward her because that only hurts us, not her. But if you find yourself in Atlanta with your orchids and need a place to put them, don't let this woman volunteer to put them in her "Bates Motel" for you. The results are scarier than "Psycho"
Phillip C
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