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My Love Affair With Orchids
My love affair with orchids began the day I received my first phaleonopsis from my brother-in-law, David, a flower grower who just last week passed away at the young age of sixty-two. I miss him so much and will never forget our encounter over orchids.
He kissed me on the cheek and said, “Now don’t kill it!”
His comment, made more than twenty years ago was part joke, part warning. I’d been the laughing stock of my husband’s family — all very adept growers. Most people kill plants because they water them too much. I kill them because I simply forget to water them.
I promised David I’d work hard to keep the orchid alive. We had a special rapport, that orchid and I, which lasted until three months later, when it went dormant and stopped flowering. Initially, I claimed my orchid stopped flowering because I’d loved it to death.
After that orchid died, there was a few-year hiatus before my passion was rekindled. Years later while recovering from breast cancer surgery, I received my second orchid, which outlasted all the cut flowers. As a believer that things happen for a reason, I saw this as a message. I thought that like the orchid, I too would survive.
The orchid lived on my bedside table for a few months. As time went on, I became more and more intrigued by its magical beauty. It calmed me when I was nervous and dispensed a positive and healing energy. That orchid flowered until the next orchid made its way through my front door, a gift from my friend, Janet, the day before I turned fifty.
That orchid and I had a fruitful few months together until it was replaced by another equally beautiful one. Soon I realized that my love affair with orchids was moving from infatuation to deep affection, so I began studying the plant.
I joined the American Orchid Society and ordered books by others sharing a similar passion. I learned that for some inexplicable reason orchids have been known to elicit deep passion, perhaps it’s their erotic and flamboyant shapes and colors.
I learned that in some parts of the world they’ve been transformed into talismans, amulets, good luck charms and have been known to ward off evil spirits, improve health, increasing courage and virility.
