Some twelve years ago, or even earlier, I started an orchid garden right here at home. Within a span of three years my collection grew to a good number of different varieties of vanda, dendrobium, phalaenopsis, and cattleya. I was so fascinated with orchids then that I spend hours everyday, more on weekends, giving them my brand of TLC - tender loving care. How I loved to see them blooming in different colors, shapes, and sizes.

Orchids stay healthy and blooming if given the needed care - proper watering and a regular dose of food and fertilizer. Left unattended for long without these, relying only on sporadic showers and rains, they will surely suffer. Sadly, that's precisely what happened to my collection. After being away for ten months on a teaching stint outside the country, I came home finding them much reduced in number and in a desperate state.

It has been a good eight years since I got back. My orchids? Just a few left and flowering spikes are rarely seen. Fascination turned frustration.

eye-catching display
nostalgic mem'ries of yore

my orchid garden

oo0oo

looking at orchids

sad heart aches to remember

my elegant spikes