Chapter Three: Doomsday and Rejuvenation. . . July 17

   Well, as promised, here is part two of today's blog post, recounting the events of Chapter Two (moving into a new house), and the period of time and the catastrophic event (those that have followed this blog for a while may have a guess at what this catastrophe is and what caused it) that lead to today's Grand Rejuvenation and the start of Chapter Three. (Dear lord, I am dramatic, but I am sure you are all used to that by now). Pictures and story after the break!

   So, picking up where I left off. . . Chapter Two rolls around and finds me in this new house, where I spend hours my first day officially living there reassembling my closet stand into my new closet, a place where at the time I wouldn't have called it a paradise. One of the things I discovered was that the closet is actually nearly two feet wider than my original paradise, but it was also a couple inches shorter. Due to this, I had quite the fun time fitting it in, and it barely squeaked by, a wonderful result of me decided to leave some room on all sides when I built it for my first paradise. Unfortunately, because it was shorter, I could not fit my fish tank into the closet, therefore forcing my deflasked seedlings out into the common area.

   Here is where things begin to go downhill. As you all should know, I had been fighting with mites from nearly the beginning of my closet growing era. I had always managed to keep things under control naturally, mostly due to the amount of time I had, which was a product of a small number of plants. As time went on (this is during Chapter One) and I obtained more plants, I was unable to keep a close watch on everything, and the dreadful mites slowly began spreading plant to plant. Since I still had a decent amount of time, I was able to keep my trays full for good humidity and spray off any noticeable mites. However, Chapter Three was already on its way before Chapter One even ended. In the last couple of months before my move, I became extremely busy with school, work, and other things, which means I didn't always have time to water. The mites became worse, and plants started become too infested to bother trying to save. I was able to obtain a miticide during this period, but there was only one day that I had the time to spray my entire collection, which did set them back a bit. However, I didn't really know everything had to be sprayed a week later to catch any new hatchlings, and they just came back.

   Fast forward to the move and Chapter Two. Within just a few weeks after the move, and after suffering more neglect, I went on a week long trip with my school, leaving the care of my plants to my parents. When I cam back, I could smell the aridity in my closet. By this point in time (half way through June), I had completely forgot what a healthy, pest-free plant was like, and was close to quitting orchids. One by one, plants would be so infected with mites, that it felt like even the miticide wouldn't save them. I would have tried spraying everything, but I knew it would be pointless unless I could get every single plant and repeat the process a week later, but by the time I was finally able to do so, it was much too late.

   Finally, July rolls around, and the weather is finally acceptable enough to ship plants, and I place a small order of four plants. By the time they arrived, all but four or five plants were in the bottom half of my closet, left for death. Upon getting these new, healthy, pest-free plants, I was determined to keep them uninfected, and to do so for now on.

   Today, which I mark as the Rejuvenation Date, I removed every single one of my old plants (save one, my Gelblieber, which is leafless but still hanging on to a green pod near maturity), most of which were long dead, filling up a garbage bag of them, and threw them out.

   Yep, that entire bag is filled of dead, infested plants.

   Afterwards, I took out my four new Phalaenopsis, Tying Shin Blue Jay, (gigantea x LD's Bear Queen), K S Jadegreen, and a Phal. stuartiana (Green x var. nobilis), and sprayed the living daylights out of them with the miticide, and I even went as far as spraying down the entire surface of the closet with the miticide, as I am out to kill them hard.

   However, there is hope in the horizon.

   This here is a flask of my very first successful cross, a remake of Phal. Penang Girl. I had used my own venosa as the pod parent, and donated pollen of a pretty unique pink violacea as the pollen parent. Also, on the date that I picked up this flask, I also dropped off a pod of my remake of Yungho Gelbliambo (amboinensis 'Oriental' x Gelblieber 'Arienne'). I also received news that my flaskers first attempt at dry seed flasking, using my seeds from a pod (Rarashati Princess 'Bronze Goddess' x I-Hsin George 'JH') that had split before I got it too him, was successful, and there is germination is completely sterile flasks!

   So, I enter Chapter Three with this Rejuvenation, and knowing that I should never have to deal with mites again (I do plan on spraying again a week from now, and I may just spray every new plant I get from now on), and the prospect of three of my own crosses in the works (plus the pod hanging on to my Gelblieber, fingers crossed for that) and many more plants to come, with plenty of crosses too! Life is looking good!