The building of my new plant stand!

Well, I was hoping to get a much more detailed picture process of me and my Dad building this, but we were constantly doing something, and after 2 1/2 hours of straight working, I was a little tired!

Here is the hardwood planks that were made into the legs of the stand. The eight taller ones where for the four legs of the bottom, and the shorter ones for the top (which hasn't been finished yet).

Hehehe, a picture I snapped of the main architect of this stand. (I had the ideas, he had the tools)

Here are the three pieces of 25"x48" plywood that would make the base, middle level, and top of the stand.

Here are the legs for the bottom and top level.

And now skip forward many more building hours to the completed stand (I think. . .)

Since the last picture I screwed the legs into the top piece of plywood, which had the light-bulbs screwed onto. I taped aluminum foil to the sides and back to create a wall of shinyness to reflect extra light back. I then covered everything with a thick plastic wrap that came around my parents new mattress, and I also taped that onto the legs and front to create a moisture seal. I also filled two of the trays with leca to aid in the humidity, and I siliconed one of the fans to the corner of a leg so that it can be elevated. The front piece of plastic is in three pieces, one complete one running across the whole bottom third, and the top two being cut down the middle so I can open it while it still being closed off. This is now fully functional and permanent home to two orchids and two common plants.

Spike update for the Phals

Here is my Phal. ATL Crossing working away on its' spike. So far I think I can see a total of 6 or so buds developing, an improvement on the 4 and 3 on last year's spikes (which makes sense, as the two spikes have a total of 7 buds, so hopefully this one spike has many more buds).

My Penang Girl working on a new spike after the other one dried up!

Phal. NoID #1 I am still debating whether to sell this or not. . . I think I might, as I would be able to fit an ID'd chid into this spot that I could use for breeding.  .  .

Phal. (Tying Shin blah blah blah) is working on a new spike that recently hit a growth spurt.

Yeah, I totally forgot to take a picture of the Mambo.  .  . well, now the next time you see it it will be WAY bigger than last time!

Guaricattonia Lawless Gloriana 'Yellow'

YAY!!! In the past few weeks my Gct. Lawless Gloriana 'Yellow' has been fattening its sheath! Just in the past couple of days, the sheath split, so I felt it was sufficiently safe enough to peel it away (flash-backs of my Loddiaca 'accident' still present).

From the looks of it, I am going to be getting three buds from this spike.

Some blooms

Well, as stated just previously, I haven't updated this blog/journal in a while, so these have been open for a while. First is my Phal. tetraspis 'C#1' (or speciosa var. christiana) that had made three buds, but one blasted early on. It also has another spike beginning!!! I just love how vigourous this plant is!

Here it is with a .  .  . geometry tool.  .  . that has a ruler on it to help with size scaling. Since you can't really see the measurements, its slightly longer than 15cm. (I am going to try to incorporate this into all my plant shots, and probably flower shots too).

And, here is an attempt at a semi-professional picture with our lame point-and-shoot. It is interesting to note that now it is blooming in the winter, the flowers are all white. Compared to it blooming in the heat of summer (literally), I was getting flowers that had much more red on them. With a difference of the day temps being around 7-9C* from summer to winter, its interesting to see how much temperature affects the colour of the blooms on this little guy.

(I just measured and the flower is about 4cm. NS)

Here is the first to open Grand Stars #2 bud to begin to open with aforementioned.  .  . geometry thingy.

And here is a semi-professional attempt to get a good shot of the flower.

Approx NS of 25cm.

Oncidium spikes!

Ugh, once again due to my lazyness, I haven't uploaded photos to my Photobucket in a long time! Anyways, here are updated pics of my spiking Oncs.

Here is my Onc. Gold Dust with its spike just beginning to show buds!

And because I was bored and I could, I unpotted the Gold Dust and mounted it on some Epiweb!

And you can see a new growth starting from last years p'bulb to the right of center.

Here is my Tol. with its spike getting ever longer.

I really don't like this one's NoID status, I think I may sell it at my OS meeting on Sunday.