Starting Saturday, Feb 23 at the New York Botanical Garden, you can view a huge collection of orchids — a true feast for the eyes and a great way to chase the winter blues away. The Orchid Show features displays, a shop, how to care for orchids and more.
The show is open to the public, but you must get tickets to attend as entrance to the show is timed so it doesn’t get too crowded. Show ends April 6, 2008.
Orchids aren’t so mysterious or too hard to take care of. The one pictured here sits on my deck outside all year (I live in Los Angeles near the coast). It’s a cymbidium and I water it once a week with the other plants on my deck. It sends out spikes once a year and this one is blooming now — in mid-February. Keep an orchid plant year-round inside your house and for heaven’s sake, don’t throw away your orchids when the blooms fade — just cut the stem of faded blooms, continue to water once a week and wait patienly until it blooms again. While you are waiting for more flowers, a good trick I learned from my mother-in-law (she is an interior decorator) is to have a silk orchid bloom
to insert in the plant when it is not in bloom. The glossy green leaves of the real plant make it hard to tell the difference.
