ORCHID OF CRUSHED DIAMONDS - PODANGIS DACTLYOCERAS

I have another orchid in flower and this one does not look much like an orchid, admittedly, but is.

I also like this one because the flowers are pretty unique in themselves. They look like they are made of glittery rice paper or crushed diamond dust glued to pieces of polythene.

I have e very soft spot for this one and must look into getting this one bigger, I am obviously coming up short on giving it what it needs.

But then I have so many orchids, a boring but busy like with my health conditions which also screws up my memory up to a dozen times every single day.

Also odd is that I have one other orchid with two big spikes on it. Not odd in itself but the fact there are two of them at either end of a one metre humidity tray and each one with a Dendrobium kingianum (one hybrid) right next to them and yet the ones on the right produce more flowers and earlier than the ones on the left?!

It is like we have had more sun in the UK in the first half of the day than we have in the second for the past 3 to 5 years?! I do not know if this is even possible or it is some sort of weird weather apttern we have in the UK that no one has spotted?

I have noticed, in all honesty, that there has been more sun in the morning than there has in the afternoons as I ride a bike and the number of times I thought I would end up going out riding because the weather looked good only for it to turn crap is an inordinately large number.

If you ever see one of these Podangis dactyloceras for sale try to remember one thing, they apparently do not like to be potted and I have never ever kept mine that way due to reading that. If I had several more I would give it a try but with large wood chips. But as I only have the one Podangis I would not try it.

Yeah, yeah those that have been here enough times know that like with artificial light I do not take much notice of the books. Lol. I have a Dendbrobium victoriae-reginae and a Vanda coerulea that only get artificial light from a number of high powered LED bulbs and not a couple of inches away on them either ... umm except for the orchids that have literally grown right up next to the bulbs. Lol.

A TINY SPECIES ORCHID - SCHOENORCHIS FRAGRANS

In what may turn out to be my last ever video and pictures of my orchids I have something that is rather stunning.

The DWP are coming after me again, I am registered disabled, and have told me they are stopping my benefit and the Citizen's Advice have told me that this will also get my housing stopped. Meaning that unless we, the Citizen's Advice who are offering to help, get this reversed I could lose my home ... again!

Annoying as it has flared up the anxiety symptoms of my Fibromyalgia which as pretty powerful.

In all honesty I think this is an attempt to stop me blogging about them and all the other public services on my corruption blog, A Saint Called Allnights. I have posted a large amount of evidence and much of it recorded proof. I have not published anywhere near all of it! Also I have not done enough with the blogs or the YouTube channel to get rid of the DWP for good. Unfortunately.

Anyway ... that is another matter.

For only the second year in the four years I have had my tiny orchid it is flowering and more so than it did last year!

Oh and a bit weird but there must be more wrong with my old camera than I realised as I noticed that on the camera's monitor the flowers looked purple but to my eyes directly they were far more pink than purple!

First the pictures and then the video at the bottom ...

QUEEN VICTORIA & HIEROGLYPHIC ORCHIDS

Well the Dendrobium victoriae-reginae is currently putting on its best ever show and even with the nineteen flowers all currently open it might just get a little bit better?

This is because there are no less than ten buds on it that have not opened and half of these not far from opening.

There are a couple of new canes that have sprouted from it but no roots yet, or Keikis. Not sure if this species likes having its keikis (new canes with roots) removed. I have done this with Dendrobium nobile but not looked it up with Dendrobium victoriae-reginaee.

Even if you can I am not sure that I would ... not yet anyway but if it ends up producing another haf a dozen then I might.

I do like this orchid.

I also like my species Phalaenopsis though I have only flowered to of the five or six that I have thus far. The fact that the Phalaenopsis hieroglyphica is now flowering fills me with confidence that the violacea, zebrina and sumatrana will do this year or next year too!

My Schoenorchis is still spiking with two spikes this year. That will make a cool little video.

Maybe my Trichoglottis pusilla will spike soon also? I seem to recall it flowering a little after the others did when it first flowered?

PHALAENOPSIS HIEROGLYPHICA & PARISHII

Well after an inordinately long wait the second of my four or five, I always forget how many, botanical Phalaenopsis has flowered.

Almost by design the first one to ever flower, the tiny Phalaenopsis parishii, currently has no less than seven flowers on it.

The Phalaenopsis hieroglyphica also has no less than four spikes and the second one at the front is a couple of days from opening. So there will be two at once.

These flowers tend to alternate in flowering on the same spike so you never get two together. However, having four spikes kind of leaves things a bit ... well, open. Lol.

Here is a picture and a video ...

See anything on the bottom left of the picture?

Phalaenopsis parishii and its seven flowers.

FINALLY SOME ORCHIDS

I had a couple of Dendrobium kingianum types flower early in the year as they normally do. One flowered very well and the other merely OK, as usual.

However due to my one of my conditions, Fibromyalgia, which causes memory lapses I kept forgetting to video them until it was too late and thee flowers were drying up! Damn it!

Anyhoo I had some others flower and some spikes on some of my tiny orchid species along with a ... surprise and the second of five orchid species I have had four years about to flower for the very first time!

See if you can spot it in the videos?


Yellow & Purple hybrid Phalaenopsis ...

Tiny Phalaenopsis parishii ..

Even tinier Schoenorchis fragrans ..

The blue Queen Victoria Orchid, Dendrobium victoriae-reginae ..

THE NEW PHOTOGRAPHIC TOOL NIKON P900

After a long, long wait and my Sony Cybershot being technically broken for about 6 months I have finally gotten around to replacing it!

My Sony has a 50x zoom, which I cannot use anything close to any longer and has now been relegated to being permanently attached to a tripod for filming in the house. As short range it can still manage to do.

After an arduous journey and battle with London's public transport, some stupid mistakes and several times where I had to stop and hand near my pocket to grab my phone and call for an ambulance, I managed to somehow struggle through it and find the camera!

Rather oddly I had left the address behind of the Camera World store I was aiming for and though I knew its rough location I was a bit worried about ending up in hospital so headed for faithful old Jessops!

Before even exiting the station at Russell Square on the way there I was slumped against a wall on a staircase!

Only when I got to where Jessops was the last time I was in there ... it was not there!

That is the other problem with Fibromyalgia ... memory problems! I had forgotten to take the address to Camera World with me and never thought of checking to see if Jessops was still at the location it was when I was last in the in New Oxford Street! Dumb-arse!

I do not know if the slumping against the wall ore the burning, tingling feelings I had for thirty minutes afterwards was anything to do with Fibromyalgia, lack of blood pressure pills or something else? Or just an unfit bastard? Was a bit rough though, which means a lot of i say that.

Walking up Oxford Street instead of heading back into Tottenham Court Road, where some loom directed me, I walked past some scaffolding and there was a PC World! I know, I know I have had a refurbished item from them and it could have happened again. But I just wandered in just to see if they had a display one. They did. It was huge!

I saw an older gentleman who looked Indian standing  looking miserable. I got the impression he might not be happy as all the younger sales people probably intercepted any sales and I asked "Well you look like your not doing much?"

After initial shock someone asked him something and walking him tot he camera I asked if they had any in stock. They did. He got the box out, I checked for any seals over the lid of the box, dead give-away to refurbished items, and there were none.

Often there are these little seals that are clear but when pulled off say the word 'void' in gold that magically appear.

I had these on three Nikon cameras I bought a few years back from Argos. Nikon do not put any seals on their box and Argos swore blind they did not do it and stated it was Nikon. Wrong.

I also had an Olympus camera that went wrong in a line of consecutively received and amounting to four cameras from Argos.

I had one professional Corsair Vengeance Keyboard with a large dent in the aluminium base plate from PC World, just in case you were wondering. Oddly the Roccas Ryos keyboard I exhhanged that one for and around 8 months down the line started missing keystroke now and then and also adding one, or even bloody two extra keystrokes! So I guess we can safely take a stab in the dark about where that came from?

To be fair the Sony Cybershot came from PC World and that was new. It ias also the only thing that I have bought that has worked flawlessly for well over two years until it got dropped on its head and it still works to a degree!

Anyhoo ...

Thought you would like to see the new camera?

Nikon Coolpix P900 ....