Well, Mister!
Where the heck have you been all my life?
Happy new year and happy everything to you, too.
Good advice as always.

BTW, my collection is WAY down too. Less stress...more enjoyment. (and I NEVER got Shady's maxilaria to bloom for me in 3 years...the shame of it all.)
V

Wow! I was recently just trying to find your email address to send a "hey, what's up!" message but must have lost it in the switch to gmail. Great to hear from you! (((Copious Hug!)))

My plant count is down somewhat as well. I'm cool with that.

Val, pitch that weed! Or freak it out somehow. Or just learn to love the foliage :)

Hi Orrin--Strange as it might seem, I was thinking of you yesterday!! Guess we are still sympatico. As my catts bloom I am bringing them in to society meetings and selling them, so my collection, too, is somewhat reduced. Though friends have been generous with help taking care of them, I feel it is too great an imposiion on them. Happy New year, and good vibes!

Hey Orrin, good to see you here again !
Okay, here's one more Indian festival for you to celebrate... Jan 14th is 'Makar Sankranth' . In North India it is commonly known as the 'festival of kites'. Picture zillions of kites of all shapes, sizes and colours being flown all over the place by little kids, housewives, corporate executives, little ole grandmas (and grandpas ). Its beautiful. And its fun... because its like a return to childhood for most of us and its the one day when everyone's looking up all the time : )

I was wondering where you had gone too. Glad to see you are still hanging around.

I have fewer orchids too but now that I'm in Florida....

Well, it's nice that I haven't been completely forgotten. I'll try do drop by with a bit more frequency.

January 14th is my birthday actually, and though I won't be flying a kite (maybe next year), I am going birding, looking at sort of living kites. At least that's the plan, though the weather has suddenly turned craptacular-it's frigid here right now, and it may rain (we need it badly so I shouldn't whinge, but I was hoping for a nice day and not a bundle-up-and-shiver one).

Now I'm off for a pre-birthday steak dinner friends are cooking, though I desparately want to spoil my appetite with the chocolate babka calling to me from the kitchen.

Thanks for the pleasant replies kids.

-O-

Have some babka! If you don't, just sent it to me and I'll take care of it.

I hope you have a great birthday, Hon. And see lots of groovy birds! I'll be lifting a glass in your honor tomorrow evening.

Great to hear from you again! I think of you often and wonder how you are. It sounds like things are good and you're doing well - makes me glad. Have a great birthday celebration and go for the chocolate. You can always finish your steak tomorrow.......

Laurie

My collection has also been downsized. Happy New Year to you all.

Have a great birthday, O.
Happy Sunday everyone.
Shady, the foliage on the max is as grassy and lovely as it was when you brought it to me.
So I appreciate it, just hopeful for a bloom one day.
I cheated and bought a small max at Hausermann's 2 years ago in spike.
Thought that might inspire ("or freak it out somehow") as you suggested. Nuttin' honey...

When did Laura move to Florida?

I moved to Florida a few months ago. I've been talking about it for years, should not have waited so long, I love it.

Okay, Orrin, you want birds, I'll give you birds. The Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge is home to 500+ species of birds that either live there year round or are migratory. It's basically a 140,000 acre buffer around NASA (possibly the only good thing about NASA, depending on your feelings about the space program). We go there several times a month to de-stress and take pics. Where else can you see alligators, manatee, dolphins, eagle nests, bobcats and all those birds, outside of a zoo?

Laura

Here is a link that might be useful: Merritt Island birds

The birthday was good. The birding was fab. Weather was more than reasonable (unlike this forum-I wrote something much nicer than this then went hunting for a photo and came back to annoying message disappearance-bloody computers, oh how they vex me). Anyhoo, here's a photo I didn't take of the best bird today (I hope).

-O-

Here is a link that might be useful: Lawrence's Goldfinch

Pretty birdie! We don't have those here :( Where did you see it?

Your birthday margarita was delicious, by the way.

IOoooooh! All the old regulars! Hey there Orrin! I'm so glad to hear from you...I too think of you often. and....I'm downsizing my orchids too....even though the Phal serpentilingua I bought from Bada is....IN SPIKE! I guess I've done something right! > : ) Lets all not be such strangers...and yes, Sunita, I think I owe you an email. :)

Woo hoo! It's raining! After a decently rainy monsoon season last summer we've had a very dry winter, so the wildflowers will have a dismal spring this year. It doesn't bode well for the wildfire potential either (we've had a lot of that in recent years).

The 'pretty birdie' was right here in Tucson. There's an artificial wetland park maybe fifteen minutes away, next to a sewage treatment plant-they've used reclaimed water to create several ponds which attract a lot of birds. The place is currently loaded with ducks, and we get quite a lot of raptors there (saw Prarie Falcon last Sunday and frequently see Peregrines there). I'll be going again this Sunday.

And I just realised I forgot to mention the new household addition: I have a new kitten! Jaguarundi, my gorgeous manx, passed away last year at the age of seventeen (oh how I miss that kid). A friend of mine rescued a tiny feral kitten and I adopted him. His name is Joaquin and he's a little spitfire-I call him my tiny cheetah because he is wickedly fast. Very cute. Very sweet. Very bitey (we're working on that, although he only does it with me and plays very nicely with everyone else).

So anyhoo....

-O-

I'm sorry to hear about Jaguarundi. That's a pretty long life for a kitty! Joaquin sounds like a lot of fun. One of my favorite kitty friends is bitey sometimes, too. But I still love him :)

Hey Orrie, long time no see! I'm so sorry to hear about your kitty :(. The new baby sounds like a lot of fun.

Sorry about your kitty friend .
The wetland is neat especially in the desert . Sounds like a good place to get away :) Gin

Hey Big O...

I missed ya...glad to see you're back.. ;)

Hey O, miss your birding and eating adventures~
We have male Flicker Woodpeckers hang and eat from one birdfeeder that has safflower seeds in it.

I am happy. This forum is alive again. Let's keep it going. My collection is rather sparse right now but I will try again.

Well this is lovely...

I can only manage to do this sort of hover thing because my computer is whacked and I'm on a friend's. But it's lovely to see all of the familiar names, after so much time.

So, since it's an orchid forum I can say that I'm very pleased (despite the major downsize) that I've managed to purchase what I believe to be a paph schoseri seedling-so impossible to find for a reasonable price when I was collecting...ah, christ. Bloody orchids, I can't escape them. But I don't think I want to. And then I'm trying to stop smoking as well, sort of....

Joaquin is an amazing baby-kitten-child, honestly and without bias the most beautiful orange tabby that I've ever seen; he's all spots, and looks like a domestic kitty version of a wild lion/cheetah/bobcat cub. But he's getting big and keeping those fabulous spots. OK, I'm biased. But really, he's a pretty kid. And he hasn't made me bleed much at all lately-my baby kid is growing up.

This last cigarette and I'm off to bed. I never came here and talked about the snow-it snowed here bigger than it ever has since I've been here. Fantastic. Uncommon. Huge. Froze the hell out of everything, because it got so cold (freezing) and stayed that way all night, for hours. But it snowed, fabulously. So many things died, but at least it snowed.

OK, drunk and loaded...

-O-

Good luck with the quitting smoking. I did it long ago (except for one or two cigars a year) and still think it's possibly the only worthwhile thing I've ever done.

Man, but you're up late! I've actually been going to bed earlier and getting up earlier. It was nice when I could read and sip tea and watch the sun rise but lately it's just been watching the dark gray turn to lighter gray. I'm so sick of the snow. I'm on vacation this week and have spent almost every day doing some shovelling and/or scraping. More last night and more yet today and tomorrow. I'm so sick of this place. :p

I forgot to say congrats and good luck on the schoseri. That's one I've never had.

OK, I'm back shortly.

Mark, Paph schoseri is one I couldn't get for blood nor money, unless I paid a lot of money, when I was collecting species. I maybe saw it available twice, for wads of cash. This guy is little, but way stupid cheap, and I figured why not. I don't think it's a jacked-up hard to bloom thing (and I've dealt with those).

Too much on-topic. Joaquin is a fantastic kitten-child and makes me very happy. The bitey thing is going away as he grows up. He retains his spotted gorgeousness. He's ever so smart (I refrained from swearing here so as not to get tossed off the forum, but really...).

And not to be too off-topic on-topic (that kid of mine), what are we reading lately? I could start a new thread, but I don't wanna. I'm reading 'Tieta' by Jorge Almado, and not being thrilled by it-a bit ponderous and too many interruptions by the author to drop in his comments...I don't know. I'm liking the story but not the telling, and it may just be the translation. I had a lovely break in the tale with the 'Brokeback Mountain' short story (borrowed for a friend from a friend, and of course I read it first). A dandy story.

You should probably all know that I get drunk and loaded (some of you may know what the loaded part is about, aside from the drunk) before these little sillinesses get written out. Chemicals happen. It's not always a bad thing. In fact, sometimes it's pretty good. At any rate...

I'm off. Love you kids.

-O-

Right back atcha and I'm going to go start a book thread. We'll see how long before it turns to food.

I'll also check out those titles you mentioned.

Whoa...so I'm not the only one that took a sabatical and lost a lot of plants?!?! How weird is that?
It's good to see so many of you...Orrin, Val, Davey, Sunita, Shady, Clint, Lisa...let's talk, huh?
Patty