Valentines Day Flowers

My husband has found the key to my flower preferences and also the key to lasting appreciation. He buys me orchids. I have always preferred living flowers rather than the cut variety and with the orchids they last a very long time. I have a rather large orchid collection, (Fay knows, she helped me gather them in when she was here and we were having a surprise freeze.) Orchids thrive off of neglect I think, because I really don't do too much with them. There's a baker's rack in my kitchen where they stay for the winter, and then when summer comes they all go outside to spend the time under the trees in the shade. Thanks to my good husband, they do get watered automatically for 30 minutes everyday and I'm sure they are thankful to him for that, because otherwise the water would be sparse. (We're on a private well system for those concerned about our drought and water restrictions.)

Sorry for the rather dark picture, but the others had terrible shadows and I was busy with other projects, so not enough time to photograph them again at this point.

The purple one to the left is one of the new ones that he gave me this Valentines, well actually a week before. It is one just like one that continuously bloomed for almost 2 years, it had flowers the entire time. He was very happy to get his money's worth out of that one. The small yellow ones are 2 of the ten that my mom bought me two years ago at the Southern Spring Show that comes to Charlotte every year. Ten small orchids that didn't even have pots. Just picked out and put into paper bags as I remember. I came home and potted them up myself and have watched them carefully. Now after only two years they are blooming. There is a third one that is getting ready to bloom, purple it looks like. The other big orchid on the right is a repeat bloomer. Don gave that to me for some previous occasion and it's blooming again. It's always a big deal for me to have an orchid bloom again. And especially this much. It's yellow with magenda strips so it gives it a peach color. Very nice. Plus, now my husband gets the appreciation for his thoughtfulness all over again. So much better than cut flowers.

Then also for this valentines he gave me this as well.

It too is an orchid, Cymbidium I think it's called. Very showy, but the blooms don't usually last as long as the others. I took it outside to photograph in natural light.