I have had a serious issue going on for seven months now.
It should have not gone on this long but it did.
There was delay after delay and I am not even sure why, with most if not all of them.
As I stated on my corruption blog .. it will mean some big changes when it occurs and will mean that I can buy a shed load of things that are for professionals, like camera equipment.
But before I could buy anything else I needed something that would help me acquire these other tools, of which there is a long list.
Of course one of the other issues I have had is that I use my mountain bike for a lot of work and .. well the weather has been dreadful for me and my health condition. My condition does not like it when it is hot and humid and it was exactly that of late.
Well .. that is until it turned to rain and last night I could heard this horrendous and loud noise and I thought 'That sounds like really, really heavy rain but that kind of rain I have not witnessed before!'
I got up and looked out my window and I think many local Indian people could be forgiven for thinking they had been teleported back to India in he middle of a monsoon!
Anyway yeah so I needed the bike and as has been the case for years now .. if it is really hot, raining or even just a wind stronger than 10mph then getting anything done wildlife wise, or anything else for that matter .. is impossible!
But ..
.. not anymore!
As I stated previously .. many tools to come! Lol!! Hmm .. heated greenhouse?! Lol.
Well it is another year ... currently without too much in the way of people or organisations screwing with me ... well ... there is ... one but that will be in hand in due course.
Anyhoo after a year of being screwed with and ending up in some ... dark places I am back.
Back with some force too soon I might add. Back in a way that has never even come close to being seen in the nearly five years I have been blogging.
More on that in a couple of months time.
So I have some pictures and videos of an orchid of mine in flower, the Trichoglottis pusilla ...
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.
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 ...
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?
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.
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 ..
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!
Sorry ... lots and lots happening right now and all will become clear soon. Umm they currently are not clear to me right now! Lol!
Did this video several days ago and have been trying to upload it to YouTube ever since! In fact I am sure there are several other things I have filmed and photographed I need to upload?!
Anyhoo my Blue Bamboo Orchid, Dendrobium victoriae-reginae, has not only produced more than one clump of flowers it has now gonee mad and produced five or six clumps?!
So here is a video of it and I will try and get some pictures up ... umm if I took pictures?! I think I did? Trouble with one of my health conditions is one of the many things it does is screw around several times daily with short term memory! I will not go into the pain list nor the other 80 things it does, lol. Or my blood pressure going both way too high and way too low, or my Hiatus Hernia or Right Knee or my Oesophagitis! Hehe.
None of the above ... well OK one thing is causing me issues of late, the blood pressure going to both extremes and the cheap crap pills they keep putting me on and then taking me off again.
I am in the dark with my 'lots of things going on' which is exacerbating the blood pressure problem, lol.
But all will be good in the end ... and I now am at the end, thank God!
Now for a little video of a very nice Blue Orchid ...
Well I am pleased to report that my very, very tiny orchid species orchid of Schoenorchis fragrans has flowered due to my increase in feed and an addition of another couple of 20 watt LED lights I bought from Sainsbury's Homebase for £5.99 each!
That is now two orchids that have flowered for the first time on me that are both species, or botanical orchids, from two completely different families, or genus.
The first of these was the Samurai Orchid, or Neofinitia fulcata and now this one ... umm wondering if I posted up the Neofinitia?! Lol.
It is true to say I have been a little ... preoccupied with regards a subject that my most popular blog covers.
This has held back my other blogs somewhat, along with the highly variable weather, especially my British wildlife blog.
This s because something has occurred several months earlier than ... well, than I expected it to in all honesty by about 6 months. This is a very big thing and though I do mention this on the blog in question I do not go into detail. Just trust me it is big and over the next couple of months it will change everything. For the better.
I have to be even more preoccupied than ever before with this said subject and for at least a month ... maybe three or four. It is simply impossible to say. Despite the in depth knowledge I have within this particular blog's posts and it may seem like I can predict, work out and appear to know everything ... well, I do not. Some things I literally have to take a stab at and hope I am in the ballpark. From time to time I am not.
Sometimes these stabs are completely obvious by which then I will state so.
But before I get preoccupied with this other ... matter I decided that recent activity with my Orchids should be posted up before things go a bit ... well, nuts.
I have several Orchids in flower and an even greater number with buds and I only hope that I manage to catch those in flower in the coming weeks in picture and film and post on the Internet.
I have several Moth Orchids, Phalaenopsis, in flower and a few in bud.
I have also now, this morning, noticed that my Dendrobium victoriae-reginae has a few buds on it and I dare say more will appear over the next couple of weeks?
My Vanda coerulea is in bud, or the very early stages, and I fear this one might be missed, though it is several weeks from producing flowers.
Here are a few pictures and videos of them ...
Dendrobium victoriae-reginae ..
Ahh yes ... new LED bulbs I spotted in Sainsury's Homebase for stupidly cheap money and very high wattage. Well high for an LED. AT £6 each I decided to get TWO! They are 20W each so now are hooked up alongside my 16W and 19W Toshiba E-Core bulbs. It is VERY bright now, lol.
Annoyingly I have been trying to add new E-Cores for two years but the prices have increased markedly and I have been pushed for time too.
Well here is that video and finally I have uploaded it and now to link it in here.
These Orchids are simply stunning and for such a small Orchid too. Fleshy and succlulent like leaves in an almost tiny Vanda like build but with what looks like miniature versions of Phalaenopsis zebrina flowers.
I just remembered that many of those Phalaenopsis, which I do have, of zebrina, hieroglyphica, sumtrana and the like only produce one flower at a time but acn produce several flowers in quick succesion.
These Trichoglottis can have more than one and while this one currently has four flowers there is another spike appearing so might end up with 6 or 7? If the flowers are long lasting that is? Could be that they might only last a week and the spikes take two weeks to flower?
Trichoglottis pusilla is a tiny species orchid with really neat but very small flowers. Looking a bit like another botanical species, Phalaenopsis zebrina, but with smaller flowers and a totally different plant type. In fact the plant, which is also small, looks more like a tiny Vanda than it does a Phalaenopsis and only a few inches across.
Well my Trichoglottis pusilla completely surprised me by showing me some well developed buds!
Cool!
A bit late getting this video, and several others, uploaded on here and I already have a video of this Orchid with four flowers ... err or five completely out and with another spike appearing!
Take a look ..
The video of the plant with four flowers out will appear in the next week ... plus there is a third spike so might be another with 6 or 7 flowers on it?
Now these two Cymbidiums blooming were achieved by leaving them out until they had three nights of hard frost. Yes I am aware that many books state that they should not go below 7 degrees celsius at night...but I tend to ignore the accepted rules because everyone writes about what they do which is just copying what someone else has already done.
So after first surprising a few people at leaving them outside at such cold temperatures and with frost on at least three nights I have now got them to flower for the first time in several years, well since purchase in fact!
Well at long last the flowers are slowly appearing and the first lot of buds I spotted have been overtaken. One of the two spikes on one Cymbidium has had about three buds open with a few left on one spike, The other spike has had none of the buds open as yet.
The other one is turning out to be a red Cymbidium which I thought was a Lilac Cymbidium that today I started to recall a vision of throwing that particular Cymbidium out?! Odd, but then I do have this damned condition that cuses short term memory loss. Mind you it would have been over a year ago I thrrew it out.
I was expecting one of the three Cymbidiums that were orihginally one plant to be the one with the bigger buds but these are canary yellow flowers whereas these are clearly red. I purchased the two now flowering at the exact same time, oddly enough?!
I did a little video and will do another when all the buds have opened..
After its best part opf a year sulk, due to carbon monoxide that I bloody well knew they would not like, the Blue Orchid of Vanda coerulea has flowered once again.
Now rather bizarrely it is at a totally different part of the year it has flowered before and it is in flower right now. Added to this is the fact that it only has two flowers and is by far the worst show of flowers it has had since I obtained it!
I am entirely convinced that in a few months it will flower again and will have over double the amount of flowers it has this time around.
Also and like the Bulbophyllum earlier in the year it bloody well flowered with both the flowers facing the wall!
Typical!
Also you will see my species Phalaenopsis still surviving in the video and my newly acquired Paphiopedilum primulinum which is a miniature sized Slipper Orchid flowers thats bright yellow?!
My brother very kindly purchased this for me at McBean's Nursey just outside Lewes in East Sussex when we found ourselves their unexpectedly just before Christmas.
I picked up those Odontoglossums in those tiny flasks (Urine Specimen Bottles) which should turn out to have a yellow flower in two years or so when they do flower?
On Boxng Day evening I noticed some large buds among my Orchids than confused me because they looked both really large and very alien to me! I had never seen these buds before!
As I followed the spike down to its base I realised it came from one of my Cymbidiums?!
Oddly there was another pot with a curiously bulblous growth on it I thought may turn out to be a collection of buds and it seemed to be coming along very slowly.
A couple of days later I then realised I was not paying close enough attention because on the far said of the poot from where I thought buds may emerge another lot DID emerge, so yes may well be two spikes on a second Cymbidium flowering?!
Now I have no looked through them all buit just in case people were not paying attention, errr or I forgot to mention it in a post on here or my YouTube account and you are now wondering what I did to get them to flower?
Well someone noticed in December that my Cymbidiums were outside still! IN fact I told everyone that I was fed up with them not flowering or look tatty that I have a theory I am putting to the test and that they can think of it as a ' Kill of Flower Cure'. The theory was based on this common belief that the flowering is triggered by large changes in day and night temperatures being ... well WRONG! Lol!
They normally came back indoors in October or even early November but this year they was out until just a few days before Christmas day itself and i case you do not live in the UK, this included several nights that included a hard frost.
Yes I said a HARD FROST!
Umm I did say 'Kill of Flower Cure'?
Yes well my understanding of animals led me to the fact that the commonly held belief about Cymbidiums could be wrong and as everyone mostly just re-writes what everyone else states about Orchids and sticks to 'the rules' the truth never gets discovered.
I will give you a clue that it gets damn cold in the Himalayas and I also have a Vanda coerulea that I also know can take cold and have seen them covered in snow!
